In your example company, I think remote work may have been the catalyst for the change you’re talking about in the specific case. But what if they’d introduced some other small change that had nothing to do with remote work like moving the conference rooms to the other side of the building so that people not in a conference couldn’t easily tell there was a meeting going on. Each time the environment changes, new building, new project etc... we don’t think it’s necessary to have had a different culture from the beginning or to completely remake the culture from the ground up. We just make the appropriate changes.

Culture has to adapt to the environment. There’s nothing special about it being remote.

If you have an open office and everyone is constantly having loud, impromptu meetings in the same space, that’s just as much of a problem.