The reality for many is logging in to MS Teams or Zoom to have virtual meetings even within the office. That is what a significant number of my professional colleagues did even while at the office: many of them would just dial in from their offices, even when the meeting room was right down the hall.

A significant portion of companies already accommodate hybrid work environments, whereby some meeting attendees are remote. This would be no different.

There may be legitimate cases where physical proximity is a key advantage for a specific team, but the current WFH situation has demonstrated that those cases have likely been exaggerated, as people are demonstrably productive (in the case of my company, results in record profits) while completely remote.

I've been developing software for over 35 years now and I've never worked in a environment where the development team/engineering team isn't geographically dispersed - even across countries. That includes the startups I've worked for. You might have 1 or 2 people at your location working with you on the same team. In my experience a critical part of being able to do this job is to be able to work on a team comprised of members residing in different parts of the world. Doesn't really matter to me whether they're going to an office or staying at home.

So do the companies. When it's convenient for them, they have no problem splitting up a team over multiple timezones/countries/continents. If physical presence in a shared space was really that important, they wouldn't do that.