Will Big Tech soon require a 5-day return to office?

Yes yes ofc I know the jobs are different, but if you want normal people to take you seriously you might try leaning less into this whole "WFH is a human right" stuff.

I've had the experience of insanely productive WFH days, but ofc if I am honest, I have also had the experience of insanely unproductive even counter-productive WFH days. It's a great option for employees and employers to use when it makes sense. but the idea that it's the default and any attempt to rein it in is a rollback of workers rights is madness.

That's the whole tradeoff for working for big corp and essentially always has been in some way.

The generally smaller companies that pioneered benefits like 4-day work weeks, full remote companies, and "unlimited" time off realized they could offer things that didn't directly cost the company much/any money or even saved money but managed to attract top talent away from larger, more stuffy companies.

None of these mega-corps can say that their in-office teams are engaging in purely in-person collaboration without lying through their teeth since they are the ones who have dozens of global offices.

Instead, RTO is there to enhance their ability to monitor employees, make sure they aren't overemployed, make sure they don't take soft days off, etc. To these bigcorps, it doesn't really matter if it hurts productivity by 5-10% or cost a lot of money for the office space. The control is, supposedly, worth it.