Prepositions Difference – Sit Next to Someone vs Sit Beside Someone vs Sit By Someone

I will work in the next month.

means that the day or days when you will work will occur some time within the next month. Perhaps you will work on November 4, or from November 8 to November 12, or just on November 3, 8, 14, and 29. Or perhaps you will start your next job on November 10 and continue working for the rest of November and beyond.

I will work for the next month.

means that you will work starting from approximately now or tomorrow, and the duration will be one month.

With no preposition:

I will work next month.

the meaning could be either "one or more times within November" or "the full duration of November". The context would need to indicate which meaning was intended, or it would be ambiguous.

Here are some similar contrasting examples with in and for:

My vacation lasts for a week. [The duration of my vacation is one week.]

My vacation begins in the middle of the week. [The starting day of my vacation is Wednesday or close to Wednesday.]

My vacation begins next week. [The starting day of my vacation is one of the days in the following week.]

I watched the groundhog every day for a year.

I only saw the groundhog twice in the past year.

I watched the groundhog last year. [Possibly as an ongoing activity lasting all year, possibly just once or twice during the year.]

The next Star Wars movie is scheduled to come out in 2019.

The next Star Wars movie is scheduled to come out in December, 2019.

I worked for George Lucas for six years. [The duration was six years.]

I worked for George Lucas in 1986. [My employment began and ended within 1986; possibly I had several terms of employment within 1986.]

I saw George Lucas last week. [I saw him one or more times during the week of October 6–12.]

To "drive by" could mean to pass something or also to do something while there.

To "drive past" only means to pass something.

Even though I hailed the taxi it just went and drove by me.
Even though I hailed the taxi it just went and drove past me.

Both of those are fine, except that I corrected the tense.

This is where the difference between the two matters:

I always drive by the store on my way home, so I can pick up something for you.

This makes perfect sense because you are stopping at the store on the way home. By using "drive by" here, you are conveying that you don't have to pass the store on the way home, but you choose to take that route so that you can stop to get something.

I always drive past the store on my way home, so I can pick up something for you.

I can make sense of this but the second half of the sentence surprises me because I already understood that you passed the store and did not expect you to mean that you stopped. It's not completely wrong though and I wouldn't fault someone for saying/writing this. I would simply expect a different outcome.

I always drive past the store on my way home, so I can pick up something for you just in case.

This corrects the only fault I see by allowing the action of stopping and picking something up to only happen sometimes, and so the "driving past" is now appropriately communicating that you are passing the store regularly unless you need to stop.