Corporations are not your friend. They are not actually family, despite what HR platitudes you might heat.
They will do the cost effect thing, end of story. If the cost of exceptions is $5million, and the cost of lawsuits will total $4.9million, they WILL chose the lawsuits.
Especially at the C level, where they can and will be fired and sued for not increasing shareholder value.
Remote work is still here to stay, not because anyone gives a rat's ass what the employee wants, but because it just makes sense.
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
Sure businesses are supposed to be cruel uncaring bean counting machines. But they're corrupted by all these damn apes that make all the decisions. There's no law of economics that that's that humans have to act in a perfectly rational self interest. It's an assumption that many economic theories make, for various reasons but it's far from inviolable.
But there is a rational reason for it. It reduces risk and makes output more predictable. If you have a 10x developer who is actually producing 10x, how do you plan for that? What if he leaves? If you reduce him to 2x or so, it’s much more likely he can be replaced.