Opi - I know I can't affect your ideas of "working remote". I can only share my experiences which are vastly different from the picture you paint. In my world, if you work remote, you are held fully accountable for everything you do, you can and you do collaborate and share ideas with coworkers, most people do go into the office periodically, if required to do so. There is a lot of time lost in an office environment to texting, phone calls, smoke breaks, going to get coffee, showing up on time but not actually doing any work for the first hour. There are as many more distractions to working in an office environment.

There are times I think I would prefer to work in an office, but my company is located across the country and that would require a move. We have people nationwide working from home and the same standards apply to everyone. Get the job done or you are gone. My wife and I are both salaried and we both work more hours in a week than we would in an office environment. We are not rare, we both have a good work ethic. If an employee is someone who requires in person supervision they will fail and should be on site.

I don't think it's unfair for a company to require working in person, but I don't think it's accurate to assume people who are working remotely are unproductive.

Unfortunately, Musk and DOGE have no clue whether the people they are firing are valuable assets or not.