There obviously is an advantage to in-person collaboration. There obviously is an advantage to building relationships with co-workers. There obviously is an advantage to letting a junior hire shadow you in person.
There obviously is an advantage of being able to confirm that someone's ass is in a seat and that there's a padlock on the door that doesn't open until the end of shift and that you can make all employees put their iPhone in a box to guarantee that it won't distract them while they work and to ban headphones.
I think the question is: is it worth letting companies have that level of control over employees?
I'm reminded of the first software job I had out of uni where I started doing push-ups and sit-ups in a spare room of the building. I got a few other software guys to join me. We'd do 100 push-ups and then get back to work, fired up. You couldn't see into the room. People just know we went there a couple times a day for 10 minutes.
Well, someone decided that they didn't like us doing that and they told us to stop even though it was no more disruptive to anyone than going to grab a coffee from the break room.
At 21 years old I remember being incredibly resentful that I didn't even have that level of control over my life just because I was someone's employee. Even though I was just trying to stay awake and get fired back up to do some work.
And I chuckle about it now when I do a full body workout in my apartment while waiting for pointless Zoom meetings to conclude.