Yeah, alcohol kills brain cells. But only the weak ones!

A large number of Googlers want to work from the office (I'm guessing 50%+). A separate group would like to be remote most of the time. Google actually lets people become fully remote (with potential pay cuts, related to your location).

Re: productivity - Google actually made tons of money while everyone was remote, so it's not clear that productivity was less.

A thousand engineers are going to have much better prospects of gainful employment than a thousand Gender studies or Philosophy majors.

Imagine how much better the world would have been if Mark Zuckerberg had to take some courses in ethics.

But now consider the problem of making breakfast, in 5 minutes, for one million people. It's an entirely different problem.