> many, many people feel more comfortable approaching someone in person vs. online.

Also many, many people feel more comfortable approaching someone online vs. in person.

Seeing your arguments here, I'll guess that you're just more social than many people. When I was a junior, a long time ago, I learned most things by trying and studying on my own. I always learned very little from senior engineers directly. I would do a lot better by having them tell me what to look at and exploring stuff alone.

Clearly we differ on how we feel about approaching people. I’d rather get a simple message. When people have to write things they tend to think more about what they want to say. And what you’re describing about the fly on the wall is still simply they aren’t communicating well if they aren’t including coworkers that may only be included for the benefit of learning how to handle situations. One way to handle that is to approach your boss and ask to be included in those situations because you’d like to learn how to respond. Your last line sums up how you feel about remote interactions nicely. I’m sorry, I just don’t find that your feelings about online rejections is a good enough reason to drive into an office.

> What I meant is that I learned a lot watching senior members of the team interact.

This is why I always ask my coworkers to contact me via “open” channels instead of DMs, preferably async ones like PRs (which can start w/o any code or as very rough drafts). At a well run remote company visibility like this should be even easier than having to happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Take serendipity to your bank and try get a loan with it. Have a real plan.

Serendipity is not a competent on-boarding or training strategy.