I get the feeling that remote employees do less work in general, except for the few who really make an effort to stay connected and on top of stuff despite WFH. I've been guilty of this at times, and when I got back into gear, I noticed how slowly everyone else responded to stuff. It's not just a few people going AWOL and ruining it for everyone.
Is people immediately responding to you a measure of the work they do? Does it seem productive they are interrupting whatever they were working on and losing their train of thought to answer your questions?
I know my team has had the talk that Teams is an async communication method, and that we'll get back to each-other when we have spare brain cycles. The message is instant, but there's no expectation the response will be.
No, but I expect someone who has committed to a joint project to pay attention to code or design reviews and respond within a week. Which started happening less often.
I did tons more work in 2021 when I was WFH the whole year. I built a shed and did several other large scale home improvement projects, mostly on my parents' properties. I liked to say that I was the highest paid day laborer in town. It helped keep me from going insane from being trapped at my desk at home for over a year. In early 2022 I found an in office job and it's been much better.
There isn't really a measure of SWE productivity. Even granular things like individual promo are more based on what others say than on any stat (unless it's Twitter and they use LoC).
