I have to think real estate investments, employment laws, and other factors beyond what company leadership states openly must be involved. The employee objections here are written out clearly, but the policies from big companies that require more than 50% of time in the office seem like such a tragic compromise that I can't believe they've been fully explained.

The longer companies waffle on these policies the more likely it is they will hamper recruitment and face attrition to companies with more consistent policies.

In-office is much less effective when your team is distributed across multiple sites/time zones anyway which seems to be the new normal.