> A lot of mediocre middleman managers in the typical company aren't capable of setting expectations and evaluating work results.

This is one of the key problems. It's not that remote work doesn't work, it's that a bunch of mediocre middle managers only have the "butts in seats" metric to fall back on to answer whether work is getting done.

If a manager is properly tracking progress and managing the pipeline, people working remotely shouldn't be a problem.