Why are some companies still trying to force return to office?

Some of it is culture. I worked for a large F50 company pre-pandemic that was remote friendly (at least in our org) and all communication was async, all serious discussion happened on mailing lists and the internal github, ad-hoc meetings were generally discouraged.

I have joined a FAANG recently and by comparison their culture is painful for remote, despite them having 2 years to refine during the pandemic. It is slowly getting better this last year, but culturally they are still years away from being effective at remote.

For those who say Real Estate is the reason, that math doesn't add up there. Apple doesn't give a shit about 5 billion dollars in real estate that is wasted if they think it will make employees less productive. That's a rounding error on most of their products. They genuinely believe it's at worst neutral to demand RTO.

Because the banks and local govt bet a lot on commercial leases.

Banks says they are solvent because they have "hard" assets to borrow against. Govts promises the paradise with future taxes.

Got to the office? Pay toll

Got a coffee? Pay taxes

Consume more petrol/gas for your car? Pay taxes.

More electricity? pay taxes.

You can't expect they let you out so easy right?

commercial real estate obligations. "culture"

Don't underestimate the paranoia of useless middle management who cannot justify their existence by Teams meetings alone and cannot easily brown-nose from home.

Not only can you do fine, but you can save a ton of money on office operations. The economics will win out in the end, I don't doubt it. A lot of executives and managers are simply in denial.

Lots of execs and managers believe that groups of people are more innovative and productive when they discuss things in-person.

You may think they are wrong. You may not like that they believe this. But they really do believe that in-person is better for getting stuff done, and that's why they want it.

> the consensus is that you can do just fine

Consensus where? many managers quote the Microsoft study that Remote work is making productivity and innovation harder for example