Because who are the profit driven CEOs (are there any other CEOs?) sell their buildings to? The value of their building affects the profit via the depreciation expense. Which is to say the more buildings you have for RTO the bigger the expense-and thus the lower the profit for the profit maximizing CEOs.

From a profit only perspective RTO makes sense only if the cities gave businesses tax breaks tied to business occupancy (the city’s math is they will get some of these taxes back when employees go and spend money in the city). And maybe cities are threatening to stop these taxes back until RTO.

In Microsoft’s case though people only spend some money at the cafeteria-because there is nothing else to spend money on their campus. How big could that tax break could be?

This RTO request from Microsoft does not make much sense.