I'm a manager. My team, and most of the other teams we work with, have been working remotely for over a decade and coordination has never been a problem for us.
We have a 10 minute meeting every morning to catch up on what was done yesterday and what we're going to work on today. Then I can ping individuals after that meeting for followup discussions. On average, I have one of these followups each day. Then I have 1 weekly meeting with the other managers to coordinate our team efforts (and some DMs through the week to adjust/align as things change).
We work on software and hardware. We can operate and run our software against hundreds of remote hardware devices (in our data center). There is no need to be in the office if you have (or develop) remote tooling for your team to work well remotely. At this point, I would consider it very risky for any company to not be working toward at least the capability for full remote in the future. Who knows what lies ahead.
The OP was talking about incompetent managers, which seem to be numerous. A competent manager has no problem managing a remote team and have been doing so very successfully for decades. Remote work and remote teams have existed since the early 90's. The only difference now is so many teams went remote in response to the pandemic and managers are discovering they'e incompetent in managing remote work. Their real fear is getting fired for their new-found incompetence.
We have a 10 minute meeting every morning to catch up on what was done yesterday and what we're going to work on today. Then I can ping individuals after that meeting for followup discussions. On average, I have one of these followups each day. Then I have 1 weekly meeting with the other managers to coordinate our team efforts (and some DMs through the week to adjust/align as things change).
We work on software and hardware. We can operate and run our software against hundreds of remote hardware devices (in our data center). There is no need to be in the office if you have (or develop) remote tooling for your team to work well remotely. At this point, I would consider it very risky for any company to not be working toward at least the capability for full remote in the future. Who knows what lies ahead.