Is going back to the office such a huge thing in other countries? Here in Germany almost nothings changed from the main COVID time in terms of home office. It seems like our standard of working has transformed and will not revert back.
Yes and no. When COVID more or less "left" corporate culture, a lot of US businesses wanted to go fully back to work or to make remote work a benefit, i.e., you'd take cuts elsewhere for the privilege to work remotely/from home. While some of it is likely power-tripping on the part of managers, I suspect some of it is more complex involving expensive building leases and trying to justify costs, fear of "what happens…
The quality of the data senior leaders typically use to make business decisions like this are usually either very poor and would never pass any kind of statistical or scientific bar, or non-existent. It's usually just a gut feeling and they roll with it. Managers just usually have no idea how to manage a remote team and go about replicating the physical office in digital form.