I've still hit some of these same issues during 'co-location' periods. I'm somewhat comparing apples/oranges, but I've been at some large-ish orgs (1000s of em

I've still hit some of these same issues during 'co-location' periods. I'm somewhat comparing apples/oranges, but I've been at some large-ish orgs (1000s of employees colocated) and my experience was info-hoarding was pretty string outside a small network of the 'inner-circle'. Each dept had a few of these, and you'd routinely get hit with stuff out of left-field that apparently had "been in the works" for "some time", but the requests/items/issues were fundamentally flawed (logic, whatever). 30 minutes of talking with someone outside the inner circle would have helped, but... info is power. Hoarding it helps some people more than others. I saw it happening in a 'remote' setup a few years back, except, it wasn't as intentional as it was in co-located work environments. It was more a natural consequence of people being remote. Issues/delays that might have been more naturally noticed in f2f settings lingered for months before surfacing. And... the more I dug, the more I was noticing this. More teams separated and working independently with few 'info hoarders' acting as informal intermediaries. There wasn't actual info hoarding with a political motivation behind it, but it happened all the same. Some aspects of working in that team were far better than '9-5 @ office' of 20 years ago, others were worse. I'm not a "remote work at all costs" person, but also not a "return to shared office at all costs". Flexibility/choices I think are the optimal setup. Not everyone has a great home to work from. Many people work better with routine and physical space between 'home' and 'work'. We do, indeed, often get new info/ideas from the proverbial water cooler chats. There's no one 'best' way for people to get work done, and not one 'best way' for people to work together. My 'best' working style even changes depending on the skills and personalities of the other folks I'm working with.