Big companies will always use their leverage to create less desirable working conditions than smaller companies who can't compensate as well and don't enhance resumes in the same way.

That's the whole tradeoff for working for big corp and essentially always has been in some way.

The generally smaller companies that pioneered benefits like 4-day work weeks, full remote companies, and "unlimited" time off realized they could offer things that didn't directly cost the company much/any money or even saved money but managed to attract top talent away from larger, more stuffy companies.

None of these mega-corps can say that their in-office teams are engaging in purely in-person collaboration without lying through their teeth since they are the ones who have dozens of global offices.

Instead, RTO is there to enhance their ability to monitor employees, make sure they aren't overemployed, make sure they don't take soft days off, etc. To these bigcorps, it doesn't really matter if it hurts productivity by 5-10% or cost a lot of money for the office space. The control is, supposedly, worth it.