When people say these things I seriously question if they've ever worked remote before. Yes if being remote makes you atypical for your workplace, then you'll probably be left out. But if you're working for a remote-first team the it's completely different. Nearly all of my closest coworkers I've met have been at remote companies.
I have had tons of interesting conversations, brainstorming session and just generally fun discussion while remote.
Honestly, I have personally found the amount of more toxic conversations also drops when remote. The problem with in-office socialization is that you have to socialize with people you might not particularly like (working with people you don't like is fine, but having to have conversations with them, go out for team drinks with them etc is another thing). This leads to generally more toxic behavior, since you have to put more energy into those social interactions.
This is actually a problem with remote companies.
It's really easy for teams to silo themselves away in private chat channels and form exclusionary cliques. It's fun for those in the inner circle, but it's miserable for newcomers and anyone else trying to get work done without being part of the in-group for a particular project.
Obviously the same dynamics can play out in a real office, too, but it happens much more frequently when it only takes a few clicks to make it happen. People are much more likely to be mean to each other when it's just a screen name on your computer rather than the real person you have to see every day.
Now that we're remote, it's much easier. None of the high school bullshit. If you're on a project, you're assigned work and have project team mates if you get blocked. With daily standups (even for non-programming roles), it's pretty easy to see who's struggling with a story, who might need some help, and who's rocking just fine.
The toxic people were much more likely to play politics or manipulate people when they were just a screen name in Slack than when it was Jim from down the hall with a wife and two kids. The office politicians were always hiding away in private Slack channels or even separate invite-only Discords that they created for the in-group to talk separately from the rest of the company.
In fact, one of the quickest ways to defuse politics and toxicities was to fly everyone to a location for a few days of meetings. The context didn't matter so much as just getting people in the same room.
It's the same phenomenon that drives people to be friendly and civil in person, but then tear each other apart on Facebook or Next Door. In person communication is more human.
Heck, even crossing the street is safer if you look the drivers in the eyes: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/motr/safe-crossing...
Stereotyping, I know that HN is a bunch of introverts, but we were built for actual, face to face, human contact. That can't really be replaced with anything modern technology can offer us. Maybe in 10-20 years...
https://www.inc.com/rebecca-hinds/new-research-says-workers-...
The study claimed that people spend a lot of time doing "work about work", dealing with apps, and so on: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191017005053/en/Asa...
The time spent on distractions and procrastination was around 1 hour per day:
> On average, the research shows that knowledge workers waste one hour and four minutes each day due to distractions and procrastination
So to be clear, people were working for more like 80% of their day, but not 100% of that time was considered core work or productive meetings.
People don't simply socialize and mess around on the internet for 50% of their work days at most companies. I've been at companies where people get away with that level of messing around, but I wouldn't say it's the norm.
Just minutes? No seconds? Garbage study.