But even if that is true, why would the companies feel comfortable losing their most competent workforce ( because those are the ones, who can pick up their toys and leave in US )? I was in corporate way too long and I know a lot can be done with warm bodies, but some of the stuff on the horizon will require people with at least some institutional knowledge that this lay off would generate.

Unless, and I do mean unless, because I did not work at JPM, JPM is so well run, that it truly does not matter.

there was an article shared here on HN which was great about this. It talked about how we often reverse logic behavior, and assume firms will be making the optimal choices.

We dont know. Ive gone through at least 3 research papers, all of which come to the same conclusion, hybrid outperforms RTO. Whatever decision is being made, its not based on the economic evidence. We will find out eventually.