I think there are 2 sides and both sides are important. I think that the author was focussing on the half of our awake time that we spend doing our job, while you are focussing on the other half.
The author is probably talking about naive remote job seekers who focus on the job but don't consider the team culture. I was one such naive job seeker and used to think in that manner until a few years ago.
Can you elaborate on the challenges you encountered with dealing with remote team culture? What realizations or adaptations made you less naive and more realistic and pragmatic in dealing with it?
Not OP, but my personal experience, having done some remote work for a big multinational and now for a startup, the reason it worked well for me was because I already knew the people very well.
If I were to join a team of people I've never met to work remote there are too many subtle unasked questions in the background. For example, right now I have one guy I work with who I only met - and only briefly - after months of working together. I often was in doubt about Skype chats and emails, did I go too far? Was that humor appropriate? His response seems chilly, and he hasn't responded for 5 minutes now but until I said THAT he always responded right away, did I offend him?
You can just brush it off and ignore it, and it may work out - or it may accumulate under the surface until some day it explodes. Or more likely, it's going to fester below the surface and hinder communication: You are less likely to communicate and when you do then only the minimum when you are unsure of the other guy, even if it is just slightly. It really does not need to be a major disagreement, the small and sometimes (when remote, often?) imagined ones are that hurt.
It feels much safer to work away from others when you already feel safe about what will happen when you screw up, or when you make a mistake on the project or in the communication, when you understand the other side from experience. Otherwise imagination takes over, your brain fills the parts that are not visible in remote communication, and when it has no data to do so it will just fill in something, and if you don't feel extremely secure in yourself and in your relationship that may very well be small subtle fears.
The author is probably talking about naive remote job seekers who focus on the job but don't consider the team culture. I was one such naive job seeker and used to think in that manner until a few years ago.