Yeah covid hit in my last semester of my university degree, so I graduated (sans ceremony) and found a job remotely. I was able to get up to speed perhaps a bit

Yeah covid hit in my last semester of my university degree, so I graduated (sans ceremony) and found a job remotely. I was able to get up to speed perhaps a bit faster than some recent graduates because I had done a year-long internship at a company with similar technologies to what we're using at this new job, but I still didn't really feel like I knew anyone until they started doing a hybrid work setup (1 week per month with your team in the office) and I met people face-to-face. Being a new hire and you're just sitting in your room/home office with Teams open on a laptop and trying to just hop into work is difficult. You're gonna have a lot of questions, and instead of leaning over to the person sitting next to you, where they can point to your monitor and it'll take 5 seconds now becomes finding someone to message and typing out your question to them, and if they can't answer it over text then you start a call and go through the "can you see my screen" rigamarole where they can now help you but they can't point or use your keyboard. And if you're having a lot of questions, it's daunting to ask a person you just met if you can repeatedly pull them into calls. I've noticed it happening several times with new hires where they'll just be sitting around struggling with a task they're given and not asking for help because they don't want to pull people away from their work.