Yes, clutching back the freedom that tech workers were offered with WFH that you, dear noble boss, don't trust the broader population with even if you do trust your own workers. But it doesn't stop at corporations fighting WFH, there's also the arrival of 9-9-6 work culture in tech and possibly other industries as well. After all, the entire disposition of these companies is replacing labor entirely. Child labor discussions are right around the corner once more desperation sets in.
As others have said, your "of coooourse profit is the only motive" take does not hit in 2025 with all conceivable private funding and institutional support thrown towards the neverending AI bubble, while China etc. walk circles around us with less than 100th of the research expenditures. This is all while western hardware and software companies pivot towards a corporate and government client-base, which has been obvious the last few months with micron and nvidia. AI companies have more GPUs than they can feasibly use. Surely, it's a profit motive!
And surely there are no greater motions in the industry than those that are palpable by your small business! And surely every technocrat must operate from the same rubric as you, and can't have other ideological motivations behind their decisions, just as you do not, dear small business owner.
There is certainly an element of rich sods flexing over their peons. For you to deny that that exists is silly--the fact that you got defensive around what you saw as a caricature of these people (whom you presumably relate to!) indicates to me that you yourself know better.
But that flexing was actually not my point at all, but rather, the motivation and expectation that is right there in TFA: that the employee will work harder to gain back these elements of their freedom. The part not in the article is the worker's ultimatum: they can otherwise join those somewhere unseen being munged by the jaws of destitution.