My office started going hybrid recently (two days / week right now, three eventually). I'm introverted and used to be bullish on remote work, but I did a mix o

My office started going hybrid recently (two days / week right now, three eventually). I'm introverted and used to be bullish on remote work, but I did a mix of remote and in-person collaboration in grad school and observed first-hand that there really is no comparison. Consequently, starting my job during COVID I was skeptical about remote work and was gratified to seemingly find that it at least kind-of worked. Things got done, the ball kept moving... But now that we have in-person days there's no question. The level of engagement, collaboration, ideas, 'hallway conversations' that crop up is massively higher...to the point that it feels like a waste of time. I'm so distracted from my main focus of making widgets to talk about hypothetical futures that it feels like I'm falling behind my main 'assigned' duties, but already the fruits of this are starting to be born out and we're probably avoiding mishaps and more fully sucking talent out of everyone due to lower barrier of participatory entry. I understand not everyone feels this way, but I will note that some of our team is still (and will forever be) remote. In mixed meetings they're the same as they ever were, which is to say, mostly silent. The in-person people are much more engaged. Bottom-line: if your work is well-defined or scoped at the individual or perhaps small-team level, remote might work. If you're pushing boundaries I'm skeptical--not that remote work can't work, but that it works best.