You are assuming those activities are not work or benefit the company in some way. Most seemingly useless bullshit team bonding activities will benefit the com

You are assuming those activities are not work or benefit the company in some way. Most seemingly useless bullshit team bonding activities will benefit the company long term. [This is especially true for slow-moving large companies, e.g. FANG, where very few lines of actual code is written by each employee and most of the "work" is in fact is to ensure business continuity, replicating institutional knowledge and context in employees' heads, and of the nature you describe.] I agree there are different preferences, but it's not about employee's preference for the most part, but employer's — and the case I am making is it is not at all surprising or stupid that the employers are demanding RTO by default.