I've been self employed and mostly working from home since 2006 and yet I'm with you that "working in the office is a competitive advantage." Not for me because I'm self employed, but I believe it is for people working in companies with other people in the office close to the eyes and ears of their managers.

I saw it happen 25+ years ago when working from home wasn't a thing. I worked for a consulting company. We had about half of our workforce working at customer premises. Not low fee body rental but projects that had to be run there. Well, the people getting advances in pay and career were mostly the people working in the headquarter. Managers of successful remote teams got career advances, some key remote developer got them too (customers wanted them) but most of them were forgotten wheels of the company machine.

But I'm in no competition with colleagues so working from home is great. I won't go back unless I'll ever start starving.