Interesting. I've been remote for 5 years across three different companies, and if anything I've had the opposite experience: my remote coworkers are far more responsive than my on-site coworkers, who are always in meetings, in transit, having in-person chit chat, or taking a break.

I've been managing remote teams for over a decade. Your management must be doing performance management well. Most remote coworkers and employees I've had have been good, but that was only because the company aggressively pruned people who abused remote work.

Remote job postings attract deadbeats at a higher rate than in-office jobs. There are even New York Times Bestseller books with example scripts of how to negotiate remote work with your boss so you can travel the world, outsource your work to virtual assistants, and respond to e-mails once a week. These people always come in with a "if I get my job done, it shouldn't matter that..." attitude and then they fail to get their job done.

Remote is also the target for the /r/overemployed people who try to get as many jobs as they can and then do as little work as possible at each. Once someone has 3, 4, or more jobs they don't really care if they get fired. They'll string you along with excuses until you let them go. The first time it happens to you, your sense of sympathy overrides your instinct to cut the person and you let them string you along way too long. The 3rd or 4th time you have someone you suspect of abusing remote, you PIP them hard and cut them quickly because you know how much damage and frustration they can bring to the rest of the team.

I went into the office for the first time 2 months ago. The worst part was how massively distracting it was.

The people who like going into the office at my work, go in to socialize.

They are bored at home. It literally has nothing to do with being productive.

I am sure this is all a matter of scale though. My place is really small. At the scale of Microsoft I am sure there are thousands of people really gaming the system badly.

And remote workers are available for much longer hours than the office workers or comparing to the old times when everybody was in the office.

That's the experience I have had too, particularly regarding managers who are in the office for the day. They are not spending much time at their desk.

Have had the same experience over the last 5 or so years and that too working in early stage startups.

Everyone is free to get their personal lives in order and in turn they organize and execute everything with much more dedication than i've every seen them in a corporate environment.

>> my remote coworkers are far more responsive than my on-site coworkers, who are always in meetings, in transit, having in-person chit chat, or taking a break.

1. In meetings - working

2. In transit - before and after working hours

3. Having in person chit-chat - working

4. Taking a break - remote workers should also take these

>> I've had the opposite experience

I think it depends on the type of people you're working with. I've found hand-on engineers (i.e. people writing code) are really available and perhaps they shouldn't be. Business-type people are so much more reliably flaky.