Did they gather evidence from Elon's tweets or what are we talking about?
If there were actual concrete data on RTO being empirically better, the Corporate Real Estate world wouldn't have anything to worry about in the next 5 years.
That sounds like a problem with the engineering team's roadmap/work: if an individual who doesn't do work and doesn't impact the team's goals, then how is that a problem with the individual? Maybe there needs to be a more concrete or interesting (non BS work) roadmap.
But isn't it management's inability to adapt to remote work signal that management's experience is poor? I get that we love to categorize argue about RTO vs no RTO but I think the real topic is how companies/organizations are deciding on which model to commit to and why -- the "why" helps with communicating and convincing adults to do something like commuting (management is hard work, right?).
I get that a contrarian stance can come up with an example to contradict what the article is trying to convey. However, I think the article more so tries to draw situations in which CEO/Management is failing generally (with WebMD) and is hoping that a forced in office environment would solve their management woes.
I do believe that a majority of organizations are in this bucket rather than the one you claimed.
It feels like there's a lot of productivity theory associated with private offices versus open office but I think the issue is rooted deeper than that. This is an organizational decision and it's one where it needs to be made with the organization's core objectives.
However, what it sometimes sounds to me is that there is this hope of a magic combination to crack productivity effectiveness through open offices or closed offices (or any other low level leveraged idea, like return to office vs remote office). The reality is that any configuration can work if the leaders of the organization are cognizant of the ramifications on the different employed individuals and address them accordingly -- but I believe most skip this chapter in leadership training.
I understand the frustrating experience you have had but I tend to consider the underlying problem to be leadership recruiting/hiring in the situation you described. Like it's not your fault your leaders are unwilling to correct their hiring mistake and needs wait for a company wide layoff as an excuse to put their foot down. That is just terrible leadership all the way down.
This is a bit comical. I've always figured that hiring a manager to just play baby sitter for professional adults is the most inefficient use of company resources. I understand that there are certain industries which this might be more important but I'm going to guess most industries would benefit from having better hiring practices and a more trusting culture.
You make an interesting point on managerial styles potentially biasing the decision making process for a WFH policy. It definitely is a situation where there are managers/directors/VPs who only know the adversarial style of management and imposes policies based on that perception.
At the end of the day, it is a high level leader making these decisions and it is likely a high level leader with experience/conditioning within an industry PRIOR to the pandemic so I would guess that they are more conservative or "old-school" with their perspective on company/workplace policies.
If there were actual concrete data on RTO being empirically better, the Corporate Real Estate world wouldn't have anything to worry about in the next 5 years.