No it's not, but the point is, if the team is remote-first, you don't need to make that replacement. And you get all the benefits of not having to drag people t

No it's not, but the point is, if the team is remote-first, you don't need to make that replacement. And you get all the benefits of not having to drag people to the office against their will (which are huge). In your example, if your company were remote-first, the head of marketing would always be on slack and you wouldn't have to wait for the opportunity of inadvertently running into her just to have a conversation. And so would be your colleagues with whom you (apparently) can only interact when you happen to have lunch together. And so on. You never "raise hackles" by asking something in Slack, because chat is unintrusive by definition (as opposed to walking up to a person uninvited).