They tried this one of my client's office too, but the middle-management all stood firm that if they and their teams (I'm on one of the teams) would not be retu

They tried this one of my client's office too, but the middle-management all stood firm that if they and their teams (I'm on one of the teams) would not be returning. And to fire even one person on any of the teams would mean certain death for the company since it only has a handful of developers and everyone has 7-14 years of in built knowledge. I am the most recent consultant hired, and I was hired in 2017. They back peddled pretty quickly and switched it to anyone within 10 miles of the office has to come back. There is only 1 person that close. He's the "office mom" and he's been in basically every day since the pandemic started. Even if half the teams hadn't moved further away, there is no way most of us would have gone back to commuting 2-4 hours per day.