> What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?

You'll cross-pollinate across functions. Or at least increase the chances of that happening. Not saying that's worth the tradeoff. But my time in the office often finds serendipitious value in random off-team conversations, not scheduled time.

I am currently an engineer at Meta. No one in my office is cross pollinating among different teams. In fact most of us are not even talking to each other unless there’s a dedicated meeting time for it. This whole thing about collaborating is better in person has never been my experience, because the collaboration (at least for engineering) is most of the time better done in a document.

There are, however, a few times when getting together and discussing something in person is valuable, but this is no more than maybe a couple times a month. I can definitely see this being different for other roles.

This is the huge benefit of in-person work. Personally I've not found it worth the tradeoffs, but it cannot be discounted.

I’ve had that happen like a grand total of 5 times in 15 years of work. In which kind of companies or offices do these things happen?

Are the worker bees really cross polinating? I don't even get to choose what to work on, my manager and tech lead tells me what to do and all of that is approved by the director. The everything becomes an okr and it's a huge deal to pivot half way through the half. I'm told this is pretty typical.

I think you're going to get downvoted to oblivion but as far as I'm concerned, that's been my impression as well.