GTFO With This RTO

A billion years removed from COVID times, Return To Office (RTO) still pops up in headlines. There's a recent piece at Inc. proclaiming the death of RTO. We have Information Week calling cubicle farms "breeding grounds for interruptions, and interruptions are the bane of developer productivity". On the flip side are Google, Amazon, Bank of America, and others pulling hard on people to come back. The latest from Dell is to tell remote workers that they're not eligible for promotions.

Someone please educate me on why RTO is such a big screaming deal to some companies.?

• Is there evidence that it increases productivity? Almost every piece I've read on the subject indicates otherwise.?
• Do some work environments require in-person contact? The pandemic proved that for knowledge workers, firing up a Teams meeting to collaborate and then diving back into your focus area is a viable path to productivity.?
• Do they want people to work fewer hours? Sitting in a car for an hour just to plunk down in a cubicle, put on my headphones, and join a remote meeting is the exact opposite of productivity. I could have finished up some other administrative task from my home office instead of trying to find a freaking parking spot.?

I'm a person who enjoys being around others at work. I can say with certainty that if I'd started my career around COVID times, I wouldn't have had some formative experiences that I got earlier. But I figured out how to make remote work work. My life is better for it. Dell and other RTO-focused companies are missing the boat, and should reverse their RTO policies. PM