I have family and friends to be joyful with. I want my coworkers to shut up and do their job.

I completely agree. I've always worked remotely. This separation is all I know, and I can't imagine why someone would want something different. As a manager, I don't conduct "team building" exercises. I try to ensure that collaboration is flowing, but I don't care if team members are only talking about work or if they develop some social relationship.

This is in stark contrast to my wife, who had worked in the office before the pandemic and continued with the same philosophy during remote work. She finds my way too cold, and I find hers too wasteful. I would dread working on her pseudo-remote environment.

Being able to feed off each others' expertise can be more than the sum of individuals also.

Reading all the responses it seems there's advantages both to being at home or on site and the trick is to find the balance.

I have times and tasks for which I'm more productive at home, and times and/or tasks where I'm more productive at work.

Good in-person collaboration, sometimes accidentally overhearing someone else, is invaluable. At the same time, people can get off task and chit chat becomes a hindrance.

Sometimes we all know our role and what has to be done, we just have to get it done. Sometimes we don't know how to solve a problem.

Some employees don't have a good work environment at home. A Ph.D. student with a young special-needs child felt horrible ignoring his daughter while working on his dissertation at home (where his wife was caring for his daughter), bit coming into campus was far better for him, productivity-wise and psychologically.

I think the balance might be a dynamic one, in that what's best can change over time and task and stage of a task and stage of a person's career. And by employee, and by task.

Being a good manager must be immensely difficult, but also being an employee also requires adapting and compromising between all of these trade-offs.