Most of my job is not coding. My job isn't assembly line work. It is solving problems in coordination with my peers, which yields small amounts of code and configuration.
If I had straight-ahead clear as day coding to do, and I was motivated -- then, yes, being at home in my own environment in the quiet would be great. But that's not my job, nor the job of many other people.
Working from home is not for everyone. I'm looking forward to returning.
If the task hasn't been done on time, it might be because the task underestimated the difficulty, or that the person had other tasks which interrupted this one. If the person tried their best and they are competent, the output doesn't matter so much since likely it would have taken an equal amount of time for anyone else to get it done. You can't ask people to do more than they are capable of.
When everyone is honest and trying their best there are no problems but its pretty hard to work out when they aren't.
Maybe it makes them try harder to appear busy with real work when people are around to hover over their cubes, but I'm unconvinced that you can really wring blood from a stone.
Maybe around the edges the "personal touch" is enough to inspire (or frighten) an employee in a way that remote communication does not allow, but I've not seen many poor performers actually improve unless they were already personally motivated to do better themselves.
But... maybe that is the point.. there should be a way to get those who can do WFH to keep doing it.
Maybe, just maybe the issue is that middle managers have actual, legitimate reasons that WFH isn't a universally good thing. Contrary to what you may think, not every worker in tech is a high-performing star that produces flawless code if you just leave them alone in their home office. A lot of employees are lazy and will take advantage of the reduced oversight to slack off, a lot of employees are people who need constant hands-on mentoring or direction, and a lot of employees are just simply more productive when there's someone to impress nearby.
So while I respect that you might be the perfect worker bee who does whatever work is assigned with no oversight or hand-holding required, most employees are not that, and in-person oversight/mentoring (and if in-person oversight can't happen, get ready for increase monitoring on your work laptop usage) legitimately is necessary.