You're misunderstanding what was said. It's about costs/income. RTO (probably) doesn't increase income - but people will (most likely) quit, reducing costs. Thus the ratio gets better.

it can be (and likely is) both at the same time.

management wants to execute their fancy plan to make more money, and see control, supervision, faster iteration, tighter feedback loops, blablabla ... as one part of it, hence the amazing "all hands on deck" idea that today is "everyone in the office".

The uppity, highly paid technical employee has recreated our SaaS offering on his laptop and it is now effectively free for self-hosting.

VP of Sales has left nine voicemails, would you like to play them now?

I genuinely wonder if that is actually the case. Our team ( fairly technical team within a non-technical type company ) repeatedly ( edit: and successfully) pushed back against any kind of RTO ( I personally sent rather non-corporate email asking why the RTO calls if they can't even get enough desks for rotation ). I am sure bosses hate being questioned, but I don't see anyone begging to do my job. In other words, something has got to give.

I don't know what is going to happen exactly. I feel the push from bigger corps will give smaller one a "permission" to do it as well, but I know I am already doing what I can to make sure I am ready. Last time the company tried to call me back in specifically, I was lucky enough to secure current position and was able to tell them no.

That said, even today, I know I would not be able to get my job back there and I didn't burn bridges in any conventional way ( unless you consider saying no to RTO burning a bridge ).

Fun times ahead.