I agree, there is something lost with all the remote work. You never see the facial expressions or body language of people to the discussed "ideas". I see more lost than gained.
I guess it depends.
I'm in IT for my "day job"...heavy server, application, coding and database work.
I've been working remote for 8+ years now, with numerous teammates spread all across the US. Most of us have never seen each other face to face ever....and rarely does anyone turn on the camera on Teams meetings.
(no one wants to see you in t-shirt and boxer shorts, or worse).
It's been no problem with massive projects whatsoever....and I mean massive systems moving between cloud and data centers, with 24/7 uptime requirements.
So, it can be done.
Heck, I was pretty busy past 3 years and aside from noticing people wearing masks, I'd not have noticed much was different with the pandemic...
So, it can be done easily. It will be interesting to see if managers can allow it to continue past the pandemic which does seem to be on the downhill side now a bit....because while some people miss the office, there are a LOT out there that like working from home most of the time if not all of the time.
I think it works better with more senior employees....but perhaps it does harm the younger, noobs to the company, where face time and in person politics and personality and making networking connections in those early years ARE important.
Those early years are the building blocks for job hopping and making more money over the coming years...etc.
It will be interesting to see.
C