While reflecting on this, I thought it would be interesting to hear your opinions on what, if anything, you don't like about remote work?
Hours and hours of "no, click a little bit up/down/left/right, no that's too much, no that's not what I meant, I meant that, no not that" and "write a curly brace, no that's not a curly brace, hold shift and it's the key next to P, oh you don't have US keyboard, it's line 47, no that's line 57, at the end of the line, no I mean really the end of line, put it next to the variable declaration, I mean the part before = ...".
When I worked in an office, I simply sat down next to the programmer I was helping and pointed at the screen or shown them how to do it. The same thing takes 10x more time and 100x more mental effort online, and many times I just do it myself at the end of it.
And when I'm showing something on my screen, I get practically no feedback - do they understand? Are they even paying attention? I have no idea. Seems like they don't and often I notice phone screen reflection in their eyes. I don't really blame them though, I also can't hold attention over the internet. I don't think it's a problem with my teaching style - the guys I taught in person were genuinely excited about it and applied the new knowledge immediately.
The mid/junior guys in every remote team I worked in are nearly stuck in the same place for years, whereas the guys I and other senior engineers helped personally got to senior level within a year or two.
And I don't know these people. I can't talk to them at lunch about cool technologies/games/movies/music, I can't see whether they actually get excited or just politely listen because I'm senior to them. I just can't build a true friendship this way. Very unusually it works out, but it's nothing like the old days of office work where all of our 50-member office were best buddies.
Hybrid (2-3 days per week in the office) is best, IMO.