As a senior dev, doing remote work for a team that seems to be mostly junior devs has been some of the most frustrating things I've ever had to deal with in my dozen or so years of software development. The project manager asks for phone calls (never less than 45 minutes long) 3 or 4 times a day, all throughout the day for status updates and to discuss plans (which mostly consists of me listening to people talk over each other about things they don't understand). All this on top of a project deadline that was just on the edge of being impossible to meet. It felt like a death march, (I was told it wasn't crunch at one point, so they were trying to gaslight me as well) and it would have been so much better for everyone if they would have just let me work.

I've also been on on-site teams where only one or two junior devs work remotely. This always seems to work out poorly, but based on my observations it's usually due a combination of only being willing to only pay entry level rates, and failing to set deadlines for them. When we waited 4 months on a remote while he apparently just spun his tires on a simple bug, even after I explained the fix to him (it was ~4 lines, I basically said "try looking in X file on line Y, if you fozz the frob, does it fix it?") and he just like, could not. Also he'd have "internet issues" practically every day. Now the company is skittish about remote workers, even though it was obviously their own incompetence in managing him.

I know I personally do my best work when working remote, provided I'm not being pestered constantly. I just wonder if the "remote workers are bad" thing because it seems that many people seeking remote dev work are just starting out in programming or trying to transition from other jobs thinking those high paying computer programming jobs sound easy.

I agree with your observations. I have had excellent experience with remote teams but they were always filled with mature and diligent people who didn't need constant handholding or monitoring. There aren't too many people of that type.

I work now in an office (hope to change that) and when I look around there are only a few percent of people I would trust to do well in a remote environment.

Same. I work for a company that is 100% remote. It’s the most productive group I’ve worked with in my career. Also the most senior, so it’s hard to say how much remote work is to credit vs median seniority.

I think the remote-first culture of the company attracts self-managers who value quiet, focused work, and who have relatively good communication skills.

Anyway, I never want to go back to office work after this gig.

I don't know that you can separate the two: if you hire remote it's easier to hire more senior engineers.

How do you defend hiring a fixer upper halfway across the country when you can get someone just as bad locally?

I think though the fact that there’s friction to hiring junior people in a remote office situation should be of concern to us. There is always going to be a fresh batch of recruits and if we lose the ability to train them then who will take up that job, and what lessons will those people focus on?