I worked for 5 years for a group that was located on a different continent; I was the only one not in that office. My performance was stellar based on official

I worked for 5 years for a group that was located on a different continent; I was the only one not in that office. My performance was stellar based on official evaluations, but career was stagnant, I was almost a myth than a real person with a real career. Salary raises were limited by the level in the company, so that had a ceiling too. Then I was the manager of others for even more years and we were part of a geographically distributed team. I asked the people to come to the office a couple of days per week, mostly to discuss face to face the stuff not so productive on audio (we almost never do videoconferences) and to have lunch and keep the feeling of being part of a team. This was only because of my previous experience. The result was during the summer most of the team was in the office most of the time (the request was only for 2 days), while during the winter the people with complicated comute were coming only a few days per month. Some of us were walking, cycling or motorcycling to the office, so weather was an important factor and traffic is usually very bad on bad weather, working from home was the right choice. A full work from office makes no sense, in my opinion, for most IT people except local helpdesk that interacts with people, from replacing a laptop to fixing an app for the business people, as IT people usually self-service their problems. At the same time I believe that a 100% work from home is not good for many people, especially new hires and people that thrive in a community. There is also the aspect of performance: if a bad performer is just a name, a person you never met and don't care, it is very difficult to empathize and the tolerance for their mistakes or slowness is very, very low.