Reading “How Google Works” which came out before the pandemic and it emphasizes the true reason for radical innovation in early days of Google was putting truly intelligent people together in a closed space. Is there an example of a fully remote company doing generationally transformative innovation in the past few years? And no, VPN and git companies don’t count IMO.
My take is for “regular” tech work remote is perfectly fine but if you’re trying to do something magical it’s not.