There is no doubt that some people are more productive remotely. But employees should also realize that the company’s definition of “productivity” is different from their own. For example, some engineers are happy to avoid random interruptions by working remotely, but the company might see those interruptions as how junior engineers learn the build and dev toolchains. That doesn’t show up in your peformance review, so it might not be worth anything to you, but it is worth something to the company.

I don’t think the solution here is for every company to become “remote-friendly.” I think it’s for remote companies like Automattic, Gitlab, and Invision to exist, and for remote-desiring engineers to get jobs there.