This is a bad take. There are plenty of orgs that were remote in some form or another way before covid. They're just organized and managed differently. It's 100% a management doesn't want to change issue.
That said, I feel most management teams have settled on being hybrid, where working in office is fluid, or perhaps standardized on a few days a week. I think everyone sees value in that approach, there's usually a happy medium is my opinion. But fully remote doesn't work well for a lot of larger complex orgs.
Office first by default is a scourge on this industry.
Anyway, need to go empty my mouth after throwing up from reading your reply.
The truth of that may be upsetting, management is aware.
I really cannot take a sentiment like this seriously after seeing the last 15 years of American work culture. And especially the last 3. We spent the better part of 40 years tearing down the concept of careers, trying to de-professionalize as much local labor as possible, and outsource whatever remains, and yet companies still want to pretend they care about "culture" and and "engagement"? They lay off millions of workers the past few years and yet "retention" is still a metric somehow?
This is the problem seeing employees on a spreadsheet. You don't see the generational damage this is inflicting and the upcoming reckoning when that generation can no longer be ignored politically.