If faces are that important to your design process, you can use video chat. There is nothing that can be communicated in the same room but not over video chat. I don't know what the problem you're encountering is — whether you're the problem or your work has implemented remote work poorly or your coworkers are just weird and pathological — but it really seems like you're misidentifying it.
Re:Don’t work “remotely”
by stallmanite on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @10:29AM
(#18494488)
Smells are key to the design process.
> I have multiple colleagues who just casually disappear from the office (sorry, "work from home") for days to weeks and it's beyond irritating and disruptive to the rest of us.
I cannot agree more. I would also add that (you might not agree with this) this is not just a tiny, minor problem, inconvenience, I think this can possibly cause major problems, especially in the design phase of systems. If the design is not communicated perfectly there will be problems and the only way to ensure this is to communicate face-to-face long enough that all engineers agree design is impeccable. Call me old school.