> Productivity would have to be massively increased to justify all of these additional costs and constraints so you’d think by now this would shake out in the data

I agree with you about the immense costs of an in-person office. But the fact that neither remote nor in-person businesses have demonstrated clear superiority in the market yet indicates to me that the benefits of being in-person are likely in the same ballpark as the costs.

(My guess is that it'll end up depending on the type of business. For businesses with higher than average profit per employee it might make sense to pay the fixed per-person costs of being in-person to unlock the productivity multiplier -- for everyone else, not so much.)