[ajtjp]

Small addendum: I've also noticed that, especially among the more extroverted developers, people who were on a team that went remote tend to be happier than people who join a team that is already remote. I think a lot of this is that the pre-pandemic team members already had good rapport and communication among themselves, and could use that to bridge over to being remote. Whereas when people joined teams as new members post-March 2020, it was much harder for them to build that camaraderie and - importantly - trust with their colleagues.

On the team I joined mid-pandemic, one of the ways this evidenced itself was higher turnover among the people who joined after March. The tech lead also noticed universally slower uptake on team-specific knowledge among the new folks, compared to when previous folks had joined. None of the new folks became team experts in the year I was there, despite having the past experience that would suggest it would be likely they would. And generally, the team continued to rely on its pre-pandemic experts.

All this is having joined a remote team where I think I would have really enjoyed being on the team in the office, and which I know from industry colleagues was a successful team pre-pandemic. Even with those advantages, joining remotely was rough.

In other words, I think we may still be in the honeymoon period for remote work appearing productive among the industry at large. For some people, it may work well in general, and if you specifically recruit those people you may be able to build a successful remote team (some companies did it pre-pandemic, after all). But across the industry, I suspect remote teams will become less productive over time as experienced members switch jobs, and (if they aren't the type that naturally likes being remote) experiences the slower uptake and more isolating experience of being on a team where they've never met their colleagues in real life.