I think too much of the blame here gets put on the "executive/managerial" and capital class for the back to office drive and not enough gets put on the soulless

I think too much of the blame here gets put on the "executive/managerial" and capital class for the back to office drive and not enough gets put on the soulless HR machine at these mega companies. A huge amount of the value and work the HR org does is manage things in the office, mange in person conflicts, manage relationships, etc. With remote work, so much of the impetus for these busybodies is gone, and the scope of the chief of HR role is decreased quite a bit. I think a lot of the "back to work" chatter is these type of people making up more or less baseless justifications for the amount of influence they had 18 months ago.