You hit the nail on the head. These types of discussions are sensitive because remote work is sometimes considered to be an opportunity to improve working conditions worldwide and people don't take kindly to push-back on that.

Our startup has gone through distinct phases -- It took us years to find product-market-fit and with that our ability to work remotely has gone through distinct phases that were obvious to the whole team.

At certain points it worked great, but once we moved from the idea testing phase to execution, we wanted to be face to face much more so that we could coordinate our work. Also since new hiring ramped, we have to prioritize face-to-face training.

Remote work is quite reasonable for senior employees that have a demonstrated ability to work independently. In essence, some people are capable to be productive as "independent contractors" even if they're actually a full-time employee, self-managing their time, tasks and coordination with others; and some people can't (yet? is it a stage of career develoment or separate skills?) reliably provide the results that the company needs without a strong management structure doing that coordination, task assignment and information flow for them.