There is a massive difference between Slack and in-person. In-person there is often a casualness that doesn't exist over Slack. It's hard to have a serendipitous conversation over Slack vs in-person. This is what I meant by "I think there is more informal mentoring [in an office]".

> I constantly observe people excitedly blabbing in person, seemingly reaching all sorts of epiphanies, but at the end of the day, the conversation lacked specificity and no one really learned anything. It's a perfect medium for feeling like you learned something without actually doing so

Generally I would much prefer feeling like I've intuited something rather than coming away with specific knowledge because specific knowledge is usually easy to find elsewhere.

> It's not an inherent thing to the environments, but a choice that particular team made

I believe it is inherent to a remote environment. I also believe it can be overcome, but it's not the path of least resistance.