I'm a freelancer. The first company I did regular work for had some serious issues that having us all in an office would have cured--for example, one of the other coders needed a great deal of attention from the lead programmer, and I'd have a minor question or need fifteen minutes of assistance, and he'd be busy with that coder and never get back to me, thus leaving me to figure it out on my own, which unnecessarily wasted time. He wouldn't have done that had I been right there in front of him.
The company I work for now is a lot better, but we're seriously contemplating my relocating there because there are many occasions where it would be much, much easier to be in the same room.
I don't have small children, but there are days when it's really hard to concentrate, and it's definitely harder to differentiate between "my" time and "their" time because the home and the office are one and the same. There are times I don't work as efficiently as I would if I had a regular schedule of going to the office because I'll just work later, but then there are times when the fact that I can roll out of bed straight to the code and stay there until I'm ready to go back to bed is absolutely invaluable. I can live in sweats and nobody cares, and I definitely eat a lot better because I'm getting my food at home instead of going out for lunch.
I agree with the poster that said there's really no correct answer--it's what works best for the individual company. If I do end up relocating, I'm definitely going to miss the much lower cost of living where I am now.
