Comment by TheMagicHorsey

They can "tell" employees all they want, but the engineers who really get stuff done are not going to get fired for working from home, and a bunch of them are choosing to stay remote ... or paying lip service to office days by promising to come in and then not showing up.

What are managers going to do with critical engineers who are delivering? Fire them? They will have another job doing their individual contributor work in a week. There's a real shortage of individual contributors with skills and the ability to deliver consistently.

On the other hand, if you are in one of those political mid-career positions that mostly involves communication, coordination, impressions, etc., then yeah, the org doesn't need you as much as you need the org so you better haul your ass back to work.