[delecti]

Yeah, 100% agreed with this. My team is currently 1 day/week (Thursdays) in-office, and for both better and worse, there are conversations that happen which wouldn't otherwise. A lot of great things come out of those conversations, but also I can reliably write off getting work done that day.

[jacinda]

That might also be because you're not in the office every day, people use those days to talk more (scarcity bias). I'm in-office 5 days per week and because we don't have this scarcity of time, there are lots of periods of quiet. When I wasn't in person all the time at this and other jobs it was exactly as you described.

The biggest advantage of being primarily in person is actually that we have fewer meetings. I don't have to schedule 30 minutes on Zoom with someone and if I pop over for a question (when I see the person isn't in deep focus and can contextually grab them which is fantastic as well). If it takes 5 minutes to come to a decision, great - if we need to go over to the whiteboard and take 2 hours to flesh something out; also works.