As someone who has built and scaled remote, cross-functional teams for years "before it was cool", I am amused to see how polarizing this experience has been for those who are new to this. Some managers are genuinely surprised by teams' ability to work together without having to do an in-person stand-up in the bullpen at 10:00am every morning, and by the fact that the productivity has actually been increasing simply because people don't need to spend hours on commute and have much more uninterrupted time. Some other managers complain about loss of productivity and having a hard time to keep an eye on their employees. Well, guess what. If you have built a solid self-organizing team where people are engaged, that team will find ways to continue functioning well (and, likely, better) - whether co-located or remote. If, however, you feel that you need to keep an eye on your employees in order to keep them productive, it's highly likely that you as a manager failed to build a team you can trust to get the job done without constant supervision. Switch to remote work just made the deficiencies more obvious.