I’m living the inverse of your experience right now. Just started a new job that requires 3 days in the office after having worked several years fully remote. I sit next to a full wall-length window and yet am being battered by soul-crushing overhead fluorescents. Time to figure out where the controls to the lights near me live in the breaker. I hear the COO likes all of the lights on so he can “feel like there are more people in the office.” Bully for him.
Optimization feels a lot less optimal when it leads to enshittification. I have worked on the tech side of accounting systems in the US for the last 10 years and can say that American companies have largely embraced this category of innovation as well.