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That's an exaggeration. You can actually walk to a person, knock, and get facetime in the office. Instead of zoom-time which is arguably worse.

The issue of which-3-days is real though.

A bigger issue is the asymmetry in the system - new people get a net benefit from facetime and mentoring. Experienced employees get net loss. It's distraction, unproductive time for your own projects, unrecognized at review time.

And since experienced employees have more clout, mentoring can become a negligible part of the new employees experience. Even at companies that claim to have made a system of mentoring, stories abound of failures ('mentors' that ignore questions or requests for meeting)

Being interrupted is “arguably worse” than a zoom call.

Hybrid is not reasonable. Hybrid means having to maintain a home office and also remain within commuting distance. It is the worst of both worlds. Even the people who choose to work every day in office are complaining: they can’t find a desk now. It’s been a hilarious shitshow that I get to watch remotely.

> Because part of the meeting participants on any given day is not there.

That's not the only possible "hybrid" model though. The one where multiple large companies (or company-like divisions) are time-sharing the same facility, so that for any workday it's either 100% of the group present or 0% of the group present.

I'm not saying it'll prove practical or popular, but it does avoid the "there's always somebody missing from the meeting" issue.

> In my experience, remote mentoring is a piss poor substitute for the real thing.

This is very true. Probably the biggest contributor to my career were the first two internships I have had. I can't imagine having them done virtually over Slack and Zoom and still having the same impact and connection, it would be devoid of an essential sense of belonging and inspiration.

> Hence, this nice physical face-to-face meeting, a supposed benefit of returning to the office, does not materialize.

It does in my experience. 1 on 1s and small meetings often do have all of the attendees present, especially when in-office days are designated. Some meetings do have people attending virtually, but a good conference room setup with large screens and good interfaces for conferencing make it more comfortable than being stuck in front of your computer. Regardless, you are in the room with many people face-to-face, and you can discuss things with them after the meeting and build relationships.

I see your point, because sometimes I have to find a room in the office just to have a 1:1 virtually, which arguably is more of a hassle than just taking the call at home. But I do find that hybrid works well overall in my experience, and the interpersonal benefits are large even though not everyone is in the office at the same time.

> When you come into the office you largely continue to work as if from home.

With the penalty of wasted time on commuting.

there is absolutely such a thing as hybrid. it just requires that everyone picks the same 1-3 days to be in office.