Fully remote workers are ineligible for promotion? That’s not necessarily a negative. If you want a real promotion, you have to leave your company. Otherwise, all you get is sawdust.
This just shows how many "people" persons are in tech management that don't really understand technology and don't feel comfortable using it to communicate. Bad news for they is that we, the people that get the job done, we are technology people, we are not afraid of chats and video calls and we know how progress can be measured remotely.
Keep that shit up and you will lose your best employees.
This has started at my workplace as well. Big Tech has invested a lot in big office real estate, and I feel like there's some tax accounting write-off behind the push for this kind of stuff.