But I think the reason virtual collaboration only doesn’t work is because you need to meet people, socialize outside of work with the business lunches and dinners etc. Just because you are a lot more forgiving of people and it’s a lot easier to assume positive intent once you have met them and broke bed with them.
Yeah you can do the virtual “war room”. But it’s easier for people to say “no” to other meetings and block their calendars for an entire day when they are all in an office on-site in the same conference rooms.
I guess my entire thesis is that constant “collaboration” in a large group of any form is overrated. You collaborate and brain storm over strategy and then it’s usually you working by yourself or with another person over tactics which can be done with screen shares, putting ugly boxes in diagramming tools to discuss architecture and then polishing it, shared docs etc.
As far as working environments, the beauty of remote work is that you can buy some place bigger/cheaper/further out that’s optimized for your family situation.
My first home that I had built had a “bonus room” upstairs - the only thing on the second level - that was separated from the rest of the house. But I admittedly I never had to deal with small kids. My (step)sons were 9 and 14 when we moved in together.