The commute doesn’t help you, but working in an office next to your team mates will accelerate your work.

Software development is a team sport and individual productivity is not the same as team productivity. Communication bandwidth in person is much higher when colocated. Startups move fast and higher bandwidth increases velocity, reduces errors, improves quality and team cohesion.

For other situations remote can be “good enough”, and has advantages eg bigger recruitment pool or cheaper labour, but in general in person is just going to be a lot faster with higher quality results.

A lot of engineers don’t wish this to be true, because wfh is often better for them as individuals, but it is what it is.