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I think hybrid has its place. But it's definitely not a one size fits all

I hope you get a better job, and they get a worse employee in return.

How long have you been working remote vs in office? Would be a easy win for unemployment if you worked more remotely than you did in office so the change is contradictory to your role.

At my previous job, I had a coworker who was hired on after the office decided work from home would be permanent. Everyone in the office was originally from northern Illinois since that's where the office was, but she lived in rural Iowa in a farm with her husband. She mentioned how she really wasn't able to get a job like this previously as she would have to commute long distance to the city. And of course she and her husband can't just pack up the farm and move it closer to her work. So you're absolutely right! Work from home could very well be the thing that saves small communities that have been largely going off.

Would arguably reduce housing costs on average?

(Canadian here with some knowledge of the industry)

It hasn't reduced prices on average, but it does flatten out the distribution across the country. I would say that for small towns the short-term effect has been overall negative, because it drives up housing prices in regions that historically have lower wages, and also ties up the construction industry and drives up prices there as well, so it becomes more difficult to both buy an existing house and build a new one. The real winners in the equation are the remote workers who are no longer tied to big cities and can use their "big city money" to buy pretty much whatever they want in a small town.

Long-term (after things have stabilized, maybe a decade, and assuming the "immigrants" stick around) it will be more positive, because the small towns' tax base and demographics will be rejuvenated. Short term infrastructure pains are real though.

This come up sometimes and I can't speak for everyone, but I don't live in a city just because that's where work is. I live here because it's dense, walkable, has a lot of stuff happening every day, and many different people.

Moving out to a rural or suburban space is a huge downgrade on most metrics I care about.

I still want to work from home.

It already reduces housing costs for those who move away from high cost of living areas. Also, access to high speed internet is already common in rural areas of the USA. It wasn't 10 years ago but we've made a lot of progress.

Fuck you. Here's your upvote

We're basically subsidizing this behavior with low taxes. It ought to be unaffordable to waste money on offices they don't need.

but think of the poor landlords not getting money for renting out office space /s

You know what's more sad? Tons of people die in traffic accidents on their way to work. It's literally the most dangerous thing they do all day, and they do it for no reason.

Worse for the corporate real estate investors though. And that's why they won't stop pushing to get people back into offices.

Is it better for the feelings of rich people? Because that's what's important.

It's not even about profits. If companies don't have to pay for expensive office buildings they can save money. It's all the middle management realising their jobs are are unnecessary.

Found one real job this year without any problems. Maybe look worldwide? You're not any longer bound to your city or your county when looking for 100% remote.

I had to shift this attitude myself when I started looking around this year. Was used to only look for jobs nearby to reduce commute... Bullshit. Opened up for worldwide (English is business language nearly everywhere) and now happily work remote 100%.

I wish you much success!

1. Find companies that support wfh
2. Apply directly
3. ???
4. Profit?

My company is making people come back to the office. Then they started laying loads of people off. Now one of our key initiatives for the year is to improve employee retention. Hmmmmmmmmm...

You gotta remember the tape delay on moves by big corps. Google/Microsoft/Apple/etc. all are suffering after their top talent left. So they're all slowly backpedaling their behavior.

Big Corpo always lags behind what the FAANGXRAGNAROCK tech companies do, so they'll likely realize the same problem has happened in another couple of quarters, mimic the behavior again, and silently backpedal.

I've already seen more job listings claiming "hybrid/remote" and even companies like AT&T and Verizon are offering remote-only technical roles on their job sites now.

Sure would be nice if these idiot companies didn't keep copying each other and just realized that, no, I don't want to sit in a shitty loud hot office all day. If you want me to be productive, let me work where I am. If some people like it, cool, let them!

They should all recognize this as a cool advantage to cut down on their commercial real estate offerings, or sublet some of the space they don't need. There's tons of money to be had and/or saved by making these adjustments.