> I wish fully remote was something you could earn once you've spent X amount of years at a company.

IME this is how it used to be in many companies. You earn trust for a few years then petition to go remote. There was usually a lot of process involved (I remember having my request go up the chain to a VP for approval) but as long as you were a high performer and okay with a mild pay cut, it generally went through.

Then post-COVID many companies had trouble luring people back when being in-office was purely optional. That's when you started seeing the RTO mandates and the refusal to allow anyone to switch to remote regardless of performance.