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Short answer: Control.

Traditional employers want their employees back in the office since they are unable to control them otherwise. Employers and managers who have failed to grasp the concepts of remote working, lack in async communication, and have trust issues with their staff, want to keep a physical headcount of the sheep

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I have been working remotely almost exclusively for the last 13 years. One thing I've realized (and experimented) is that it is super easy to make a team of full remote developers to jump ship together since they don't have to move to a new place if they stay in remote positions. In addition they can continue working within the same team if all the team agree to change company together. And I think this can be quite scary from an employer point of view.

That can also happen with physical teams. I am familiar with several instances where one team member got a job somewhere and was able to pull a number of resources from current to new employer.

All of those sound like problems the employer has, not anything the employee is doing wrong.

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