Every workplace demand could be cast into this mold. A conversation ender like this is not productive. Your manager is just as much an employee and so are the

Every workplace demand could be cast into this mold. A conversation ender like this is not productive. Your manager is just as much an employee and so are the leadership. The owners are often a faceless populace or a small team of owners. That's it. The negotiation is between the preferences of 1 set of employees and another set of employees. Every workplace tries to regress to the corporate mean. The employees expressing their opinions and injecting friction is how workplaces gain their identity. In at-will-employment cultures, the owner does what is best for the company. It isn't entitlement, it is an expression of preferences and future actions. The owner then chooses what's best for him. The recent 'return to office' push has IMO, more to do with covert layoffs and ageism than anything. The kind of people who do not want to move have social ties and are demonstrating a strong preference towards a balance between personal life and work life. Most bosses are clueless, so the only way they can evaluate employees is by how long they spend at the work place. In their impression, they can use this excuse to fire all the employees who 'would log out at 5' or 'have a family', while replacing them with *equally* talented young employees. Ofc, I think this is a fallacy, because productivity & talent are complicated. Hopefully it leads to some people continuing to stay in their new chosen town, and we see new minor tech hubs develop.