As a management, I understand that this is the perception… but it’s not remotely true. It astounds me how often this is repeated. It’s almost more of a conspiracy theory at this point. “Those evil incompetent managers are just so stupid they have to justify their existence by having people in office.”

RTO is not about watching people in their seats all day to see who is productive. It’s about getting talented people to sit next to each other, as there is significant benefit to that. It builds culture and internal networks (which helps attrition rates, especially for junior employees) and that helps junior employees learn from senior employees. They need that hands-on feedback from seniors, minute to minute. It helps people across teams work together, as in remote land, most communication is intra team only.

It’s not about input->output. It’s about building a long term company culture and employees who grow with it. It’s about building a system where communication and collaboration have less friction.

Can this be done remotely? Maybe, by a few companies who are very intentional and do it well. But remote is very difficult to do well.

If it were just about input->output, I’d offshore everything and save a ton of money.

The whole “RTO builds culture and networks” story is upside down. Culture isn’t something you force by sticking bodies in the same postcode; culture is what people build when they trust each other, share information freely, and aren’t ground down by pointless commutes. If your company can only transmit knowledge through overhearing desk chatter, you don’t have culture - you have an ad-hoc crutch for bad processes.

Mentorship isn’t “minute-to-minute hand-holding.” It’s structured review, clear documentation, and intentional teaching. If seniors are expected to babysit juniors in person all day, you haven’t built a system for growth, you’ve built a dependency loop that collapses as soon as those seniors leave.

And claiming remote is “very difficult to do well” is just an admission of managerial laziness. Remote is harder only if your toolkit begins and ends with meetings and hallway gossip. The companies that are intentional about remote show it scales just fine.

So yes, RTO is about (damage) control - not because managers are cartoon villains, but because without control, the hollowness of their systems is exposed.