I've worked for 20 years in global teams, and written communication is very important. Having US/UK/Ireland/HK/Singapore split team isn't much different from remote. Over the years I've worked in smaller orgs with a higher % of local people.
What I can tell you is that the amount of chatter grew exponentially. One place I used to call it "bilateral communication" because A-B would side-talk then A-C, then A-D, then B-C, then B-D.. all in-person. Tremendous games of telephone constantly.
Remote is a forcing function on better written communication.
It's funny that half this site is people working on various SaaS tools that are supposed to make work collaboration better, but somehow we need to sit next to each other to be productive?
The obvious solution is to fix your very-noticeably fucked up communication culture, since that would also improve in-person work.
Some orgs and managers seem to have decided, comically incorrectly, that WFH is the problem element in the above scenario, however.
Or having the universe revolve around Jira, berating devs for lack of story progress in standup, and shouting about velocity in sprint ceremonies.. while also doing the above said verbal drive-bys? Who is causing all this churn?? Where is our focus? Where are people spending their time??
It's unknowable.
How important is that stuff, I have no idea, but if half the team are friends at work and the rest can only be reached over slack, that doesn’t sound like much of a team
I have plenty of friends outside of work. I work for a living and I'm a professional doing a job, not a kid on a play date.
The cynic in me always felt that people who emphasize this benefit of office work just can't make friends unless people are forced to hang out with them every day.
Places that are very focussed on "culture fit" or if they'd "have a beer" with the person they are interviewing.. leaves a lot of people behind. Women / non native speakers / older folks generally fail these types of implicit or explicit screens.
Building a development team is something like building a baseball team. A bunch of specialists, a few generalists, and the ability to get along. Whether they'd grab a pint after a game isn't really important.
I certainly have and maintain friendships at work, some of them from before remote, some of them from after. Some of them are people whom I've never lived in the same continent or city as.
