I worked at least three days in the office before the pandemic and at home a couple of days a week or sometimes more. We closed a lot of our smaller offices over time and let people work from home full time. We were agnostic about whether people should WFH or come into the office. We started doing that around 2006.

Just before the pandemic we had a new CIO who decided everyone needed to be in the office at least three days a week which meant that people had a choice to move near an office or get laid off. Most took the layoff. I retired before the pandemic so I don’t know whether they still want people in the office, the CIO didn’t last long. I had team members all over the US and could have cared less whether they were in the office. I had no clue where they were and couldn’t do hallway conversations with them. As long as I could reach them via IM or phone easily it didn’t matter.

Virtually everything was coordinated remotely. As a manager I had to make sure I did regular 1-1’s and team meetings to keep everybody in sync at little more formally. Telling everyone to come in the office unless they need to be there to actually do stuff seems lazy and dumb.