Does optimum productivity mean that products get built quickly and efficiently? Or does it mean that the products that get built are loved by customers and drive business success?
It's really the latter that in-person collaboration is supposed to help, and I'd argue it is also the latter that is more important to long-term business success.
That said, at some point decisions have to be turned into work, and work benefits from fewer distractions. And IME remote work is better for managing distractions.
When I’m working on process or productivity improvements nothing is as valuable to me as sitting and watching a just barely or almost senior dev try to puzzle through my documentation and using my work.
I don’t know how to accomplish that in a remote situation. It might be possible, but it would take more introspection on my part to understand what I’m looking for exactly and the tooling overhead puts in jeopardy the organic nature of walking up to someone, saying hey check this out and taking notes.
These are very good question. I also believe that effectivity is much more important in product development than efficiency. If remote work has a great (negative) impact on both, that’ll be very bad.
It's really the latter that in-person collaboration is supposed to help, and I'd argue it is also the latter that is more important to long-term business success.
That said, at some point decisions have to be turned into work, and work benefits from fewer distractions. And IME remote work is better for managing distractions.