Here is my take on this.
The "talented employees" that you speak of are likely specialist workers in a commodity field like coding. Or, they might be level 3 support people who solve the nastiest of bugs. Or they might be designers or planners.
The less talented work-from-home employees might be call center workers or accountants doing payables and receivables work.
These workers might have been paid within a wide salary range where performance rewards one with a bump to the high end of the range, but they are locked into that range for a long time. The recent post-COVID demand for workers busted the ranges, but before that these talented workers (individual contributors most likely) would have been locked into a limited set of salary scales that are harder and harder to advance through once reaching the higher levels.
On the other hand, the management level workers (those whose salary is tied more to the position than the skill of the worker) are the ones who would be in the office, because they are needed to work with the higher levels of management. Their jobs are often to meet with leadership in strategy sessions, to review budgets and make recommendations, to hear confidential business plans or upcoming initiatives, etc. This layer of worker prefers the face-to-face engagements, especially as one advances higher into the leadership pyramid.
The bottom line is that the work-from-home employee may be locking themselves into a limited career range (and being labeled as a remote commodity worker) while the in-office worker gets the exposure to senior levels of leadership in the organization who likely are not working from home.
-PJ
Every industry is different as far as who they promote and how they promote.
Where I worked we were spread all over the country—and while there was a “headquarters” most of the managers did not work there.
The visibility you discuss was only available if you worked at HQ. Folks who wanted it picked up and moved and commuted to the office.
The vast majority believed the quality of life working at home outweighed the benefit of potential advancement opportunities.
Since the “promotion pyramid” ultimately has great benefits for only a very few managers at the top this worked for everyone.
+1