But if I were to play devil's advocate?
- Because you think the apparently qualified person in the Mojave desert might be a fraudulent person who doesn't exist.
- Because you think the apparently qualified person in the Mojave desert might be interviewing for jobs they intend to quietly outsource, possibly to people worse than themselves and definitely in ways that create security risks.
- Because you think the random overheard conversations and water-cooler factor of in-office work has enough benefits to compensate for nominally lower qualifications.
- Because you think you're not perfect at detecting low-quality work and think remote employees might take the opportunity to slack off in ways they wouldn't in an office.
- Because you think it creates additional security risks by removing the implicit air-gapping of having to physically be in an office to handle sensitive information.
- Because you and your current employees actually like being in-office and having that cultural cohesion, and you don't think you can get it remotely.
...or any number of other reasons.
Like, I get that people like remote work. I do too. But the moralizing of RTO is...just incorrect, I think? There are practical arguments against it (I literally wrote a few thousand words to that effect not long ago - see my most recent HN submission), but that's an entirely different class of objection than the idea that it's just about middle managers wanting to breathe down your neck.