[scruple]

My employer very successfully shipped a lot of brand new stuff during COVID when everyone was full-time remote. We made a lot of money off of those products. Then they sort of bragged about it. Then they instituted RTO. Now (I'm told, I'm at a megacorp so I'm far removed from these discussions) the executive team is bitching that we're not in office 5 days per week.

[apercu]

I think that's the question - did RTO increase productivity? I haven't seen any audited economic evidence that actually happened. Same as AI - I've seen a lot of PR and hype, but no audited company financials indicators.

Historically though, the data suggests that mass layoffs have a huge impact (negatively) on productivity after a short term "boost" by the survivors.