I think the debate here has grown pretty stale. There’s a lot of arguing about what’s right or wrong, when this isn’t really about right or wrong. There’s a factual question here about whether remote first companies are more, less, or equally competitive with office first companies. Anecdotes aren’t going to answer that question. Logical arguments aren’t going to answer that question. Passionate rants about pointy ha…
In my own case, if we say an ideal productivity output per day is 1 unit, that is 100% productive. Commuting to the office, office distractions, and general tiredness, I would put the hard limit at 50%. I've measured it, and the duration I'm very productive tends to be at best, half the working hours. Usually, it's much less. Any meeting that could be handled in slack, design documents w/feedback do not count (this is almost all meetings). The many "could you..", "do you know...", etc, all take up a good chunk, even though the requests are only 5 minutes worth of work.
While working from home, suddenly the deep focus you had 2 hours in, stretches on for 6 hours, or even 10. Or around 2-300% productive.
To what extent there is a tradeoff in office culture, and colloquial banter, that has its own value, I'm not sure. But, for people who value getting shit done, the office, and commuting, sure adds a lot of negative value in the mix.
And, you might think that this just applies to "hands-dirty" (as much as they get dirty while typing on a keyboard :p) engineering work. Though I would argue it applies equally to secondary work planning, task breakdown, and strategic planning.