Comment by ryandrake
I still don't understand the connection between physical presence in a building and someone's work output. If someone's work output is unacceptably down, then that person should be warned or let go, regardless of where that work is physically done. If the manager doesn't notice the low work output while remote, he's probably also not going to notice it when it's in the office. How will RTO "rein in" someone's work output? Is there manager going to use the physical presence to actually stand behind them watching them type into a computer?
The concern with over-employment is that many "healthy" organizations rely on trust. Someone says it takes ~4 weeks to do something, I don't want to have someone else "re-scope" the effort to verify that it really takes 4 weeks. If someone is only doing 3 days of work each week - then realistically this task could have been done in a little over 2 weeks.
On a long enough time horizon, someone will pick up on this and perceive the engineer as "slow." If multiple people are doing this in the team - then the org is probably in trouble.