As I said in another comment, part of the job as an experienced/senior engineer in tech is to work with others, and not be a hero programmer. I actually think

As I said in another comment, part of the job as an experienced/senior engineer in tech is to work with others, and not be a hero programmer. I actually think that there's room here for a hybrid. Have one track for remote engineers and one for in person. Remote engineers get different work, they generally have a lower ceiling in career potential. In exchange they get what they want, they work mostly by themselves with videoconf/slack as aid. Of course there's always the exceptions. If you're the top 0.0001% in domain experts in a field, you can do whatever you want.