I've long suspected it's got to do with office real estate.

You spent $10m or $100m on a building that's now half empty.

Either you downsize or commit to enterprise scale sunk cost fallacy and enforce RTO so your real estate investment isn't "wasted".

City centres also thrive on RTO, with high street shopping on a generational decline it's up to office workers and their employers to prop up the economy of the CBD one overpriced lunch at a time.

The city centre / real estate thing sounds like an externalisation - which companies famously dont give a shit about.

It should be a tradegy of commons at best: it may affect the CEOs 401k, but not by much (0.000001% for their individual decision to RTO for that company y). It like buying McD shares then going to McD for lunch every day with your team.

I think there are other reasons.

Most companies, at least in the U.S., don’t own their offices. They lease them.

In fact, a whole bunch of office leases were supposed to be expiring in 2024/2025. If this was the reason RTO wouldn’t be picking up right now since they would be cutting back and ending their leases.