> So we are all in the office part time, but still talking to each other over Meet and doing it beside each other in offices rather than at home.

After closing the offices for a year and a half, my employer opened them again a couple of weeks ago. They do have a vague policy about working from home (your direct supervisor can approve it on a case-by-case basis), and a couple of people are doing that. Everyone else is in the office now.

The experience here is just as you're saying -- everyone may as well be working from home, because there isn't really any in-person collaboration. We're still doing everything over (ugh) Zoom and other online tools. There's little difference compared to a month ago, except that most everyone is in a cube instead. One thing that is different is that overall productivity has fallen.

Even when everyone is in the same open plan office a lot of communication goes through messaging, to avoid disrupting everyone else and to avoid interrupting the person. So it's really just meetings.