As someone who works 97% remotely from a mostly-colocated office, I have to agree that it's a terribly inefficient way to work. If everyone were remote, it could probably work, but if it's just one or two out of a dozen or a hundred, it's very difficult.
On balance, my current job is still the best choice for me, but there's a constant background of frustration mostly surrounding communication failures.
In my experience, teams or companies that have significant problems communicating with remote workers just aren't very good communicators. Physical proximity is a crutch that can help them overcome their disability/dysfunction, but they almost always still have major communication problems--they just have more problems with remote employees.
A team that's good at communicating with remote employees is usually just good at communication in general.
Oh, I definitely agree. Certainly my employer has plenty of communications problems. But whatever communications roadblocks exist are amplified tenfold from 800 miles away.
On balance, my current job is still the best choice for me, but there's a constant background of frustration mostly surrounding communication failures.