I've seen people argue that they miss the social aspect of working in an office... which for me is exactly what's wrong with the office work: you're not there to make friends.
Today, I have five people I stay in touch with that I’ve worked with. Three I stopped working with around 2016 and one I stopped working with two years ago. Oh yeah and the fifth I stopped working with in 2011. She is sleeping right next to me now - I married her in 2012.
But to answer your questions, I work for one reason - to exchange labor for money. My work self is “looking from the 1000 foot view”, “taking things to the parking lot” and “adding on to what Becky said”. My personal life is completely different.
It’s tiring having to “code switch” with coworkers because the real me is completely different.
And if you’re working 50 hours a week, you’re doing it wrong.
Meanwhile, over the years I have managed to form connections and friendships with some people both, in office, and working remotely.
Working remotely during confinement diminished my productivity significantly, measured by myself. I had to force myself to follow an imaginary schedule, because I knew in reality it is very flexible when you're at home. I tend to be at ease with disorganization, so being disciplined takes effort, and being disciplined among the amenities of your home is very strenuous.
My wife was unaffected by it, so I think I could get used to it too if needed, but I don't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
The same argument could be made about in-place work
Competence and being someone they want to work with again is usually enough.
I got my first remote job in 2020 working at the Professional Services (cloud consulting) department at AWS. When I saw the writing on the wall, every single customer I worked with remotely and maybe flew out to see once that had some type of opportunity was more than willing to give me either a permanent position at their company or at least a contract.
I met one of my coworkers in person maybe twice. He had left AWS a couple of months prior to be a director of infrastructure at a well known non tech F500. He said if I was interested, he would create a position for me to be over the cloud migration and infrastructure and that it would pay more in cash than I was making in cash + RSUs at AWS. I didn’t take him up on his offer just because I was over the big company thing.
When I posted on LinkedIn that I had gotten another job, I had three former coworkers who had moved on reach out to me and say why didn’t I let them know. They would have brought me on their companies. These were all decision makers who could push me through without too much hassle.
I had met most of these people in person maybe two or three times.
Unless my performance really craters at my current company where I work remotely where I’m a staff architect, I can almost guarantee that anyone I reach out to that has worked with me will be more than happy to give me a referral about my skillset and work ethic.
It really doesn’t take that long to prove those traits. True working in consulting I got to do it fast. I’ve got to get to know the customer, understand their problem, deal with the organizational issues, get them to accept the solution and implement the solution.
During that time, I get to know a lot of directors and CxOs on the customers side and got a chance to meet my AWS coworkers who moved on to use their network to get better jobs as they did the same.
Just for reference, both companies - AWS and the third party consulting company I work for now are full time positions. I was only looking for full time direct hire positions.