The company I work for is still fully committed to remote first. They have closed multiple office locations including the entire headquarters campus. They can’t stop gushing about how much money they’re saving.

Thing is though that often, real estate deals are made over long periods of time. I think a lot of RTO stuff is happening because companies can’t just get out of their leases. They spent years and millions of dollars actually building offices and by god they want to see them get used.

I suspect that these big corporations were advised by banks and the government to scale back work from home policies to avoid triggering a real estate market collapse in cities by vacating expensive office space en masse. This could cause defaults by landlords and a housing crisis as workers no longer need to pay premiums to live near offices. An exodus from cities would crater housing markets, which would severely damage the overall economy. Thus corporations are pushing for office returns to shed some staff but also to avert an economic crisis, despite the cost savings of remote work