That easy, beginning of the pandemic: Companies panic that all their employees would call in sick. Or some even die (not that they’d care, but a lot of companies have a bus factor of one). So remote work gets tolerated or praised, everything works great.

Now the pandemic is “over”, it’s safe to go back into the office. Companies have massive real estate costs, so they want to put their employees back into the office. Besides middle managers being afraid of their jobs as they seem to have become useless if they can’t look over your shoulder and micromanage you.

It’s never about facts, it’s always what the companies and managers want in the moment.