but it’s possible that being visible and in-person with your coworkers increases your chances of getting a raise or promotion.

On my current job for about 2 years, I had 2 promotions. Both times I had to literally go to my boss and tell "for current payrate and for current set of responsibilities, you can go fuck yourself, I'm out". Only after that I got promoted. Doubt it will work third time, so I actively look for new job.

Point is - no one in our company gets promotions, no matter if you literally suck CEO dry (CEO is a "she", so that would be at least funny to watch) or if you freelancer that no one seen in office even once (me).

and your mileage may vary Maybe I'm in this category tho, but feels like it's global problem, judging by comments.

As others have said, many managers are kind of stupid and don't have good object permanence.

There's a guy at work who's very visible but most of what he's doing is bad. He's like writing a linter from scratch instead of just using the tools we already have. But he's visible, and idiot managers that don't understand how computers work think he's doing great work. The engineers that actually get shit done competently are quietly whispering about how to block and delay this guy's nonsense.

At my last job, whenever the manager and one of the guys would both be in the office together, by the end of the day they'd have cooked up some horrible idea. Then the rest of us would struggle to take stop it without losing all our social capital. Maybe if we'd all been in the office that would've been easier, but if they knew how to fucking collaborate it also would have been fine.

Maybe that's your point. There are people who are incompetent at collaboration and communication. They will never get better. Being in office with them is maybe the only way to deal with that.

I find it works better for staff to come in if they are still learning on a task. I am far more likely to get people to ask me and each other questions in person than over email and instant message.

I've literally given a job to two people, broken out the components on who would do what, told them to coordinate with each other, them found out later they never reached out to each other once. Then I had to get involved in redoing the task.

Yeah, I've been remote for most of the last 20 years. Some people seem to lack object permanence and organization skills and completely forget that their remote coworkers/subordinates exist.