What people don’t understand is that this is exactly what C-level management wants.

Senior talent costs senior pay. On paper, a junior employee looks much the same as a senior one, and costs significantly less. Cutting salary costs by 20 or 30% is a higher-up’s wet dream.

It also means that those remaining are the ones not questioning or pushing back against management (or at least not as much). Whether from a “manager” mindset, apathy, or dependence on the paycheck, the remaining employees are more likely to accept further enshittification (such as not backfilling the now-empty senior roles and having existing employees take on the extra work for no extra pay).

Executives aren’t stupid, they’re just working toward completely different goals than the people doing the actual work. And RTO mandates are directly in line with their goal: pump up short-term profits (at the expense of long-term stability and growth).