I'm at a near FAANG sized software company and the CEO literally tells us he knows we will take a hit to productivity. Even goes as far to say "we're profitable, this isn't about profitability, it's about working together".

This is after laying off almost 10% of the company earlier this year.

They just want to be able to pin the mega offices they own onto "expenses for employees" and make the chart look better. Line goes up and all.

Quality of life is worse, productivity is worse, it’s more expensive. It’s a nice way to increase costs.

What Im realizing is that they still win even if the product gets worse. They don't care about the product. They care about the short term gains that come from fucking around with their bottom line expenses and then presenting that to shareholders as value gain.

Modern day capitalism rewards nothing of value.

I'm a senior backend coder, and there's nothing I love more than knowing what I need to do, knowing how to do it and a day with no meetings. Everything else is garbage that needs to be minimized if you want me to work at my maximum capacity, so I have to assume anyone who adds garbage wants something other than for me to be maximally efficient.

I've left two jobs in the last three years over RTO and the org I work for now has a PO box for mail and no physical office.