Increased difficulty doesn't mean impossible or unsuccessful. Personally, I think it greatly matters what sort of culture and tooling you have available at your

Increased difficulty doesn't mean impossible or unsuccessful. Personally, I think it greatly matters what sort of culture and tooling you have available at your companies. If you've always done remote onboarding, you have years or training and materials. Having started remotely at a company that was not really prepared to be remote (2021), it was quite difficult as often many questions were expected to be answered by someone sitting next to you. Seeing new coworkers start while being in-person has shown it to be a better experience than what I had. If there's some thought put into the onboarding process, I believe remote can be effective however I would argue remote onboarding requires far more effort and planning for the same result.