"Big Tech workers got too used to perks."
I worked fully remote for a full10 years prior to COVID. And yes, there are definite perks to the employees. But there are significant perks for the company. I work a lot more when I'm working from home. I'm in the Pacific Time Zone. I'm not making it to calls with people in Israel or India if I'm commuting to the office, but I can working from home. And with a 1.5 hours commute that gets longer the later I come in, I'm not taking those calls from home and then heading for the office. If the company wants me in the office 5 days/8 hours, then that's all they are going to get, versus the 50+ working from home. The company also gets lower lease costs, lower utility costs, etc.
Limiting my hours because of the commute has nothing to do with work effort or work ethic. I've gotten "Exceeds Expectations" both work full-time in the office, and full-time WFH. The hours simply comes down to the number of hours in the day. The commute just takes up too much time to give more to the company. That's how it worked before WFH, and it'll be what I go back to when we are full-time RTO.
The problem is, for a geo-diverse telecommunications company with teams spread across the country (RTO is not changing that, no matter what they say) and, as Legg said, around the world, WFH just make sense.
But when you don't know how to manage people, the "high-tech" management has to fall back to 1900's management style.