Heh yeah even in the mid 2000s I at one point lived directly across the street from the office. I would get calls sometimes on the weekend to the tune of "hey man can you just run in real quick and check something for me?" because it was just such a PITA to use remote tools in those days. I think the tool of that era was WinVNC IIRC, though there were slight improvements every other year or so until RDP became the defacto standard.
Also, at work you generally had much better equipment, a bigger monitor, and later multiple, etc. Nowadays the reverse may be true. I asked the office for a replacement monitor after one of mine kicked the bucket, and they sent me home a 1920x1080 monitor, which compared to my thunderbolt and 2560x1440 dell, looked like a window back in time 10 years.
> I asked the office for a replacement monitor after one of mine kicked the bucket, and they sent me home a 1920x1080 monitor
I'm fully remote and my job sent me a monitor, keyboard, and mouse along with my work laptop. The keyboard, mouse, and monitor are all garbage. They're just e-waste to me so I use the laptop stand alone.
It's 2023. Employers know developers stare at their screens all day. Giving them shitty 1080p screens is an obliviousness bordering insulting.
Also, at work you generally had much better equipment, a bigger monitor, and later multiple, etc. Nowadays the reverse may be true. I asked the office for a replacement monitor after one of mine kicked the bucket, and they sent me home a 1920x1080 monitor, which compared to my thunderbolt and 2560x1440 dell, looked like a window back in time 10 years.