A stark truth about working from home is that the useless layers of middle management are exposed as not being needed. When everyone is both on and active on Slack/Teams/etc then high level decision makers can interact with low-level leads and front-line managers who are actually getting things done and shape strategic direction more easily -- and the lower lever folks can access leadership more easily and quickly when problems arise. No running it through seven layers of management, no weeks of delays to have meeting to plan meetings to think about having a meeting to discuss the issue: just get straight to the point with the people who matter. If I was a useless middle manager I would want an immediate return to the office as well.
I believe this is the primary reason for pushing people back to work. All those middle managers are shown to be useless idiots, as they usually are, when people work from home. They're trying to save their skins and justify their existence.
>then high level decision makers can interact with low-level leads
Not my experience at all. There is no "slack" or anything comparable. There is no communications that skip levels. Why would a manager allow that? They would lose their power.
“Because that’s the way we’ve always done it”, “because we need a way to keep the file and rank docile but don’t have the time to micromanage ourselves”, “because we owe Bob a favor”… many reasons, none that make actual sense.
