European engineer here. All you said is totally valid, but still, what people complain here is "forcing" to go back to the office. What advantage does forcing people to work out of their homes bring? It can only be justified with "companies don't trust their employees"
I’ve heard a lot of people saying ‘Why should I return to the office, I’m just as productive at home.’ at my work. And many people are, for the parts of their job which require little collaboration. But the company (via the leadership) sees this type of low collaboration work as being only a component of their jobs and so mandates hybrid working.
Individual employees may disagree, but they’re not the ones responsible for running the company, and they can’t pick and choose which components of their job they want to engage in.
Probably a case of management not understanding the job at hand. Certain jobs basically don't require true collaboration, actions are limited by process and rules. It's basically just a conversation they're getting, one that could be had via phone, video call or even email/teams/slack.
I'm sure that's true for certain jobs at certain levels, but in my industry most people need to closely collaborate with people from different disciplines on an almost daily basis.
