Do you mean smaller companies that all have similar compensation to each other or similar to FAANG? Cause very few companies out there are paying $400k+ for senior engineers. People join FAANG mostly for the pay - the brand recognition is just a perk.
I looked at the income statements for a few techs and banks on Yahoo Finance, and for the tech companies their net income is up from 2019 (in some cases doubled), and for the banks it is about the same as 2019 (I picked 2019 because that was before COVID). Companies are doing fine with remote work. I don't get what their problem is.
Middle managers are probably less effective or at least more obviously as such due to remote work.
They lobby higher-ups, who they have closer contact with than the ICs by definition, with various propaganda