> You sitting in a room and getting into flow-state and cranking out code is nowhere near as important as you interacting minute-by-minute with messy humans and trying to determine the nature of the problem you're solving.
Are you implying that "interacting minute-by-minute with messy humans" requires physical presence?
It doesn't require it, but in my experience is vastly more effective; teleconferencing (even with all the wiz-bang tech aids available) is vastly lower bandwidth and reduced options for interaction, and a lot more opportunity for distraction/interruption, either physically at any of the involved locations or because of tech failures.
Are you implying that "interacting minute-by-minute with messy humans" requires physical presence?