I think the big savings in real estate came from not having to keep getting more and more space to house all of your new employees. When I worked at a large tech company in SF, they were running up against their limits and just didn't have enough space to house the people they were hiring, so they had to slow hiring.
The smaller startup I worked at also had to get a second office a couple blocks away from the original office.
In the current remote-forward world, while these companies have to keep their existing real estate, they get the benefit of not having grow their real estate portfolio relative to their employee size. I was also told it cost that large tech company 20-30k a year per physical seat in the office. So I'm pretty sure the savings have been decent, even if they didn't dump their office spaces.
The smaller startup I worked at also had to get a second office a couple blocks away from the original office.
In the current remote-forward world, while these companies have to keep their existing real estate, they get the benefit of not having grow their real estate portfolio relative to their employee size. I was also told it cost that large tech company 20-30k a year per physical seat in the office. So I'm pretty sure the savings have been decent, even if they didn't dump their office spaces.