Depends on if it coincides with raises for working class staff, or there was enough transparency in operating costs and expenditures to be confident it’s not just being done for additional profit margins. If the cost of serving video has actually gone up by $2 * subscription count every month, then no problem. I suspect that isn’t the case, though.

If you remove mspaint.exe then Windows will refuse to boot. It’s true, I knew a guy!

Apple?

Good point. Hawaiian shorts too. Full ensemble.

Depends. I’ve had plenty of tough calls with management laying out the impossibility of desired schedules only to have the Jira board estimates fudged in their favor, or similar, which puts pressure on the team to deliver on timelines they never would have estimated for themselves.

Ultimately it’s a question of who’s working by whose estimates.

Terrible analogy.

I’d speculate some combination of control over employees (poor management practices, etc) and making use of owned land/offices that are difficult to sell otherwise. Not much else makes sense to me, especially for tech companies where nearly the entire job exists in virtual space of some kind - no wrenches to turn.

Edit: Someone else suggested a way to “lay off” folks by having them voluntarily leave the job to avoid the return to office. That also sounds pretty plausible to me with the extent to which companies are starting to squeeze with what feels like an incoming recession period.