Many people on HN claim that big co's like Amazon, Apple, and Google only want RTO (return to office) because they stand to lose so much money in real estate. However, these are companies worth >$1,000 billion. When you dig into the value of their corporate real estate holdings, it's almost always only $5-20 billion, a paltry percentage of their overall worth. Their financial incentives mean they do not care about losing even 50% of a $5-$20B real estate portfolio, if it in anyway impacts the ability of their workforce to be productive in making the $50 billion/year profits required to maintain >$1,000 billion equity value. Losing 50% on $10B real estate means a 0.5% loss. Losing just 1% productivity on your workforce is a 1% loss, double.

These companies care about their software productivity and profits, period. That's what drives their decisions. Their worth isn't comprised of real estate.