Different people work different ways. While I miss the ability to motivate a sense of urgency while in the office, there were also many tasks that were purely performative.

When in the office, I had discussions, meetings, and presentations which were all geared mainly to support the idea of the office culture over it's deliverable results. While I see people slacking more while remote, they also aren't creating busy work.

We'll see how it shakes out over the next few years. I suspect that remote teams will have an easier time with recruitment and retention, while being slightly more productive than in-office teams. In-office teams will probably be slightly more innovative by virtue of colocation with non-remote teams and a semi-forced need to do "something" with the time.

I would argue you’re ignoring tens of billions of dollars in value at remote first orgs. Team cohesion in person has been demonstrated to be overrated, not just at remote first orgs, but economy wide with record productivity during a 2.5 year pandemic. The data is pretty clear on this imho.

Depends now how actually talented the raw talent is.

Tom Brady, Wayne Gretsky, Michael Jordon, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, Joe Montana, LaBron James. Actual top-of-the-line talent drives everything. Sure, Kobe Bryant would not win against another team if he was the only person on his side - 5 against 1, but that is not the case. While total talent is great in all positions, the super talented can't be over-estimated. Mozart. Beethoven, Einstein. Raw talent is not nothing.