> What is it that makes management so bearish towards remote?
I think it's not one specific reason - primarily though, I think, it gives employees more power over their employment situation and lives. Employers love power over their employees and I expect them to react harshly when they perceive this power is threatened.
Secondly, CEO's are typically lifelong corporate cretins with zero imagination, and they mostly just copy whatever CEO they think is reputable. The result is they all end up copying whatever everyone else is doing. I promise you, Meta's "year of efficiency" was not unique to meta, nor was that naming. So, once one declares remote work is dead, all of them will fall behind.
Thirdly, I think it is investments already made into real estate and sunk-cost fallacy type of thing. Probably not even a little part of it is the ego boost that comes with getting your preferred parking space, corner office where you can gaze smugly at your less fortunate underlings, etc.
They don't actually care about productivity, because I think the studies are pretty conclusive about remote work so far. It's far, far easier to waste time doing nothing in an office than at home, at least for me. I can easily kill a half hour doing a lap around the bullpens and appear to be working but in reality I'm doing nothing. In most corporate remote work environments, they'll notice really quickly if you're gone for a half hour because of all the productivity software.