I’ve worked in plenty of startups (the overwhelming majority of my career, actually) and did not perceive the performance of in-office teams to be significantly better than the remote teams I’ve been on. The floor is probably lower for remote teams (in that ineffective remote teams are horribly ineffective), but the ceiling is comparable, and the average is (again, in my experience) anywhere from comparable to slightly better, because folks are working the ways+hours they’re most effective, not what someone else thinks should be the most effective.

I think it depends on your job role. I’m more architecture and operations in past lives, and being together is really powerful and reduces time taken for many tasks.

If you’re an engineer or developer mostly working a backlog, totally different story - wherever you are most comfortable working is ideal.

Either way, dogma is terrible. I have a friend who is a specialist in a specific area of finance who has been WFH for 20 years. Now she’s commuting to an office in a city about 300 miles away from the rest of her team, because the big boss says come to the office.