> In fact, they won't just work slowly, they will actively work towards sabotaging your project.

If your estimation and metrics tracking doesn't catch this remote, it won't catch this in an office. It is true that it's easier to hide incompetence and laziness, but perfection is the enemy of good on those scales.

So you had a bad experience. Plenty of us work on remote teams that deliver working, relatively bug-free products and code on the regular

Protip: If things get this far, it's the manager's fault. I've been remote before and also managed remote ICs, and you learn who needs the frequent checkins and status updates and who can be left more to their own devices. I had someone waste 2 weeks going down a useless rathole, and I learned quickly that I needed to be more involved with their prioritization and planning, and that was on me. It didn't happen again.

This. Failure of remote working is usually a problem with managers who don't/won't/can't manage remote employees effectively. If they can't manage based on results, only on "butts-in-seats" whipcracking, then they should get a time machine and travel back to a time before the internet, like in a sweatshop.

in office or not, managers and teams should be monitoring contributions

Your version control system and ticketing system should be able to identify things like this.

If not, then nobody's minding the store, and that's why things aren't working. Not cos people are working remotely.