The reason why people say remote first is because when remote is an afterthought the workplace, everyone who is remote has reduced productivity and has to run after people to get information and keep informed.

Just using Slack isn't enough. I'm watching a multinational "startup" where my wife is working every day and the boss(of the mothership) is a control freak that schedules an average of 10 meetings with her per week. Meaning she has to work after those meetings. And with everything being remote there is no accountability on the work hours. Facebook has the same problem.

The problem is that employees tried to fit their ridiculous offline work into an online work place. Instead of taking the online work potential and changing the way they work accordingly. It's the same reason why digitalization in most places results in more work even though it should be less.

A simple example is that for most distributed workplaces there is no reason to do synchronous standups. There are plenty of tools that allow for structured asynchronous standups across multiple timezones.

I don't believe it's true. Or more precisely, I don't believe it's different than what happens in offices. Given the right (bad) manager, people will be pushed to do 10h days at the office too. In that situation it is on the employees to say no.