It really depends on a lot of factors. For somebody who's shy / socially awkward / introvert (lots of those in tech) it's _a lot_ easier asking questions in chat than in person, especially a shared chat with not too many people, it's also way faster than walking across the hallway to catch the person that you need.
In my experience coaching many young engineers in person and remote, the problem is not so much that it's easier for them to ask questions, is that they don't ask questions, like, at all. They are too worried to sound/appear dumb, even when all the senior/staff engineers are super nice. And in a way I understand that, they are unproven, they have to show their worth to everyone else.
My theory is that the idea that early career people don't do well remote is that it's easier for the senior people to forget about them and not check up on them regularly to make sure they're progressing. If a person is sitting close to you and not making progress it's a lot harder to miss. Also the casual "hey everything OK with your problem?" is a lot easier in person than online. That being said, with some adjustments it really doesn't take too much effort on the Tl/Manager side to make sure junior folks don't get stuck.
I've lead a few teams remotely now and the most successful ones were the ones where I started checking up on the most junior ones often, as often as every day, just asking low-key questions like "hey do you have any questions for me? are you stuck anywhere?" for a bit, just to make sure they were feeling OK asking me when they had a problem, and re-routing them to the right person as needed. After a while they feel safe and start doing it on their own, but it might take a while depending on the person.
As an experienced person, I can chat with anybody at the company within minutes, it's so much more productive than chasing somebody in the office (which could be easily 10~20min walk away).
In person is way better for socializing, creating team bonds, etc. but you don't need that every day, a yearly/quarterly team/company offsite is sufficient.
This is my perspective working at companies that are big enough that they would be global anyway. For a smaller company I can see the argument of having everyone in the same office, but even then your giving up a lot to make up for that (commuting, walking around finding the right person) and I don't think that scales well beyond the 1000 people mark.
In my experience coaching many young engineers in person and remote, the problem is not so much that it's easier for them to ask questions, is that they don't ask questions, like, at all. They are too worried to sound/appear dumb, even when all the senior/staff engineers are super nice. And in a way I understand that, they are unproven, they have to show their worth to everyone else.
My theory is that the idea that early career people don't do well remote is that it's easier for the senior people to forget about them and not check up on them regularly to make sure they're progressing. If a person is sitting close to you and not making progress it's a lot harder to miss. Also the casual "hey everything OK with your problem?" is a lot easier in person than online. That being said, with some adjustments it really doesn't take too much effort on the Tl/Manager side to make sure junior folks don't get stuck.
I've lead a few teams remotely now and the most successful ones were the ones where I started checking up on the most junior ones often, as often as every day, just asking low-key questions like "hey do you have any questions for me? are you stuck anywhere?" for a bit, just to make sure they were feeling OK asking me when they had a problem, and re-routing them to the right person as needed. After a while they feel safe and start doing it on their own, but it might take a while depending on the person.
As an experienced person, I can chat with anybody at the company within minutes, it's so much more productive than chasing somebody in the office (which could be easily 10~20min walk away).
In person is way better for socializing, creating team bonds, etc. but you don't need that every day, a yearly/quarterly team/company offsite is sufficient.
This is my perspective working at companies that are big enough that they would be global anyway. For a smaller company I can see the argument of having everyone in the same office, but even then your giving up a lot to make up for that (commuting, walking around finding the right person) and I don't think that scales well beyond the 1000 people mark.