It's only not the same quality if you're the only one who is off-site. But consider the hypothetical case where there is no central office, and everyone's working from home. Then you don't have to deal with the problem of terrible conference room microphones, since everyone has their own headset. You don't have to deal with not being able to see the whiteboard, because people use other collaboration tools.

As sibling commenters are saying, the terrible experience that off-site workers have today is because companies haven't invested in the infrastructure to allow off-site workers to collaborate in the same way as workers in the office. Slack can replace the hallway conversations. Shared Google Docs can replace white-boards. Skype can replace meeting rooms. You just have to invest in the infrastructure, both physical and cultural to make it happen. And, as a side benefit, it's a lot easier to record the outcomes of meetings with these new tools, which makes it much easier to go back and reference what people said.

I see what you're trying to say, but you need to understand that those "distractions" or "drawbacks" you refer to about remote workers also exist, differently, for office workers. This does sound personal and simply that your company (or your experience) doesn't have the infrastructure to properly support remote workers. Because of this, your experience of remote workers is skewed (understandably).

That would affect the remotes as well and doesn't set anyone up for a good working environment. If your desk were all wobbly, lighting dim and office space generally just lousy, you'd say the same thing about the office space and how it isn't conducive to a positive work environment.

I work remotely for an SF company and, honestly, I dislike making trips to head office sometimes. Why? Because the entire place is a distraction. I observe (and get dragged into) multiple coffee walks/chats a day that take up 20/30 minutes at a time. The constant distractions of an open plan office are something that office workers don't notice, but remotes do. I can get more work done in 8 hours at home that I feel I can do in three days in that office. I've spent most of my career in an office and only became a remote worker a few years ago, but it's clear to me now just how much of a distraction an office is. I would argue that this is already a more than justifiable benefit of having a larger remote workforce.

A large % of my colleagues are also remote, and it works great. Almost every meeting happens with at least someone on VC, and it works. In-person meetings happen in the office, but Slack has become our primary method of sharing ideas and having conversation. Ideas have definitely formed over lunch, but more of them form when there's an active conversation in a Slack channel.

All of your reservations are justified, though, because that seems to be the default thinking of many people who either haven't been remote themselves or who have had a less than stellar experience of remote working. I can honestly say that the majority of our remote force across different teams (eng, support, sales) are the best in the company. But remote working isn't for everyone, and there have been people who thought it was be perfect way to work, only to crash and burn because they couldn't handle it.

It's a cultural thing - you're just not set up to do it well. Image the problems working from home would solve: housing costs, high density living, pollution, no commute time, improved communities, improved family life.

We need a cultural shift.