I've noticed quite a few responses in this vein. It may be worth considering that indeed, personal productivity is part of the benefit people get out of this kind of work.

I, too, am much more productive working at home. So much so that I started working from home 3 days a week and eventually just switched to remote work. I understand the need for team productivity but there are ways to solve it that don't require constant face time. When I, as a remote worker, had to hire employees to work for me at the office, I made sure to hire people who were good enough not to require constant supervision and did not need to ask a question every 5 minutes. After the initial orientation, I made sure to be available by email, IM, phone (in that order) which worked out just fine.

I think part of the reason for the strong differences of opinion is that both can be right. The right team, colocated, can be very productive. However, I have seen many colocated teams fail, sometimes horribly. Conversely, I've seen remote teams do extremely well also. In fact, all remote teams I've worked with have done quite well. Obviously some of that may be due to their motivation, skills, experience, etc. But the fact remains. As I say to everyone who asks, remote work is not for everyone. We're used to the norm of working on location, but that, too, isn't for everyone.

That same comment could be turned around just as easily though. If your team mates have no concept of just how much of a distraction they are, or worse they don't care, then they'll interrupt you all the time for random reasons. Some times that's fine, some times it really does speed up what ever we're working on, but the `vast` majority of the time it's things that would have been 100% ok getting typed into a 2 sentence email for me to look at when I next opened my email. By slightly increasing the "cost" of communicating it makes people think a little more about the way they do it, and if a response is truly needed "right now".