It doesn't sound horrible. I work in a lab environment most of the time, and I hear my coworkers' conversations, and I don't really care about their lives outside of work either. The ones my age are always talking about stuff like their yards or home improvement projects, which I don't care at all about, and they have zero interest in hearing about my foreign travel. The younger ones are better but only so much, plus the generation gap makes it hard to really relate.

I was implying that you work better with people you really know vs acquaintances. Not, I need friends from work.

If you and management are both pro-social, with a lot of contact time that will ammount to decisions being tilted in your favor. If you are not so social (i.e. the person who usually turns out to be the other end of the zero sum game) then by virtue of handicapping the social interaction advantages of others you will come out ahead in remote work.

I never understood this. I mean, I was in teams that cooperated well and I did not even knew whether they are married. And in bad team with a lot of personal knowedge and out of work time spend.

ok?