RTO is just real estate sunk cost plus a surveillance impulse. There is no technical reason to be co-located. Everything can be async, in text, in a well-written ticket. I've worked here 4 years fully remote and have never spoken aloud to a colleague. My camera has tape over it. I communicate exclusively via terse PR comments. My team calls me 'the daemon.'
Whiteboarding is a failure to write a sufficiently detailed RFC. If your design can't be conveyed in a 12-page markdown doc with sequence diagrams in Mermaid, it's a bad design, or you're a bad writer, or both. The whiteboard is a crutch for people who like... talking. To each other. With their mouths. In a room. (Shudder.)
Other humans are an unbounded input I cannot validate. There's no schema for a hallway conversation. No types. No tests. Someone could say anything. I prefer interfaces with a strict contract, like a REST API, or a vending machine. The vending machine and I have an understanding. It is my closest relationship and it has never asked me to a meeting.