Maybe I'm just lucky but the worst micromanagement has always been from my direct supervisors, never VP-level. In my experience most at that level (especially when it's several layers removed from the ICs) do as little work as possible, and spend most of their time hanging out with other VPs and trying to move on to the next step.
Are the tech firms the ones spending billions on office buildings? It's certainly not the VPs.
What pressure are cities applying to companies to get them to move back into the offices, exactly?
When a company looks for a new office, cities give them subsidies to open office there. Those subsidies come with strings attached beyond, "please lease this office space". They expect additional foot traffic that the other businesses near the office would benefit from.
I don't think this is true, do you have a cite for this other than stories that make national news like Amazon's HQ? Even if it happens for more than outlier examples like that, this would only happen for huge companies that can meaningfully move the economy of large urban centers. So maybe top-5 level huge companies in mid-market cities, but 99.9999% of companies wouldn't qualify for that.
Alright, let's agree that it only happens for the top 5% of companies.
Then the leadership of those companies come out and make big announcements on how WFH is dead.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying nobody implements RTO just because Amazon implemented RTO and they're a bunch of lemmings. I'm 100% that happens for more than a couple companies.
I don't think any companies move into cities with agreements they will meaningfully increase foot traffic in large urban centers, certainly not with any sort of true repercussions if they don't. That just simply does not happen.
You don’t spend many billions on the offices for nothing.
I imagine there was some pressure from cities as well since many downtown businesses rely on foot traffic.