This seems a little ridiculous, probably a backlash against shittily-handled hasty retreats to full-remote for the pandemic, from companies and teams that didn't handle it well. Putting aside that my current company is 100% distributed, doesn't have offices, and I'm the only one in the company that lives in my city, so they can't ask us back, I haven't had a job since I managed a bar nearly 20 years ago that didn't involve remote teams.

Even my last fully-classified job, where had to be in office because we could only work from a SCIF, we still had SCIFs in Texas, Colorado, Virginia, and PA and that worked fine. Maybe because we weren't Scrum and there were only 2-3 meetings a week everyone had to go to? Theoretically, software development should be a job that is possible to do in a mostly asynchronous, largely work alone manner. Linux, GNU, and other gigantic open source projects seem to have gotten along fine for decades without needing offices. Even when I was last in the Army working in the 1st CAV HQ at Fort Hood, we had brigade HQs in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Estonia, and South Korea and that worked fine. And, of course, when I was at Platoon/Company level, I was a tank commander. Obviously, during maneuvers, you can only communicate with the other tank crews via radio. We managed somehow.

Unless you're sitting within speaking range of every person you work with, you're surely sending them messages via some chat platform or e-mail anyway, aren't you?