BfV cannot ban parties. Only the highest court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) can. The only reason they did not do it was because the NPD has too little meaning to be a thread to the German constitution.

Depends on the tasks at hand, I think.

Just writing code or discussing things in meetings feels much better remote. IMO things like mentoring juniors or on-boarding new colleagues is pretty hard when you're not sitting next to each other.