I've worked remotely for several years, and more recently in an office and my gut feeling is that people tend to use presentee-ism as a proxy for deciding wheth

I've worked remotely for several years, and more recently in an office and my gut feeling is that people tend to use presentee-ism as a proxy for deciding whether someone is producing work. As for most things, it's highly contextual whether or not remote work is more productive. It mainly depends on the organization you work for. If the work is physical, then working remotely is obviously an impediment. If your organization is focused on creating non-physical things without much need for physical proximity to other coworkers, then remote work is ideal. There are just as many distractions involved with a physical work place, if not more (excluding things like watching your kids) than there are at home. Myself, personally, a large part of my day in the office involves walking to the restroom, waiting for the elevator, walking to meeting rooms (up to 4-5 different spaces, some on different floors), walking to the break room (lunch, coffee, etc), being polite and diplomatic by engaging in very casual office conversations whenever one starts, handling very low priority interruptions by coworkers, and not the least of which is preparing for, and performing a commute, of which I am not paid for. Pile on a few unnecessary meetings that could easily be e-mails and you've just lowered my productivity considerably. So in my experience, the effort involved with physical presence around others is real and takes up a considerable amount of time. I'm not saying these activities are useless, face time is important, and it's great to be social with your coworkers, and is invaluable for improving your team skills, but am I working on a deliverable during these activities? At home, I can use the restroom, prepare lunch while watching a long-running program run on my laptop, read and send an e-mail, all in the space of 10 or 15 minutes. Consider doing the same tasks at your office. Would they take more or less time than at home? Also noteworthy is the idea that remote work forces a person to collaborate through written word, which is not always necessary when you're physically present. Writing down your ideas has the side effect of compacting your ideas into their essential components. This turns out to be a nice way to work if you're a knowledge worker.