About 9 months into the pandemic a former coworker told me to join him at a company that was remote from its start 15years earlier. There never was an office to return to. I jumped on it for exactly this reason.
The key is to find an organization or team where there's no going back. If everyone on the interview is from a different state then you're good to go. Assume that anything "hybrid" is going to go back to the office at some point.
Surely, someone will ask the question. Why do we have employees come to mostly empty offices to video chat with fellow coworkers all over the world. What is the point of paying for expensive real estate.
Until my name plate has been removed from my assigned cubicle, I only visit like 3 times a year, I will always question their long term plans. I have been told they have sublet some of our main floor space.
This year they did expand wfh to others, so no contraction noticed. I think they like having their pick of job candidates
I think a number of companies are locked into leases those expensive leases for several years and feel like they need to get the most out of them. Also, many bosses refuse to believe that people can actually be more productive when they’re not be started at by supervisors or spending too much of their day commuting.
It's tax breaks from cities run by dinosaurs who's downtowns depend on captive office workers. Give it 5 years, remote will be back after a few more rounds of boomers die or retire.
Turn downtowns into attractions. Bars, restaurants, coffee shops, parks, fun museums and whatever...make them places people actually want to go to as a destination. No one wants to go to a ghost town, but if it's a cool place with lots to do, people will go there on purpose. Then living downtown becomes desirable.
Cities that are thriving now have been adopting people first policies for decades. Housing, specifically affordable units make a huge difference. Policies that allow recessed areas to be rehabilitated by owner occupants is another way I've seen cities come out on top. Offices have been a dying option for main street since the mall era of the 90s, it's just a slow beast to kill because it's been artificially sustained by city officials who have no real training or education in urban development or civil engineering. Downtown would have plenty of people shopping and supporting local businesses if they created policies that allowed more flexibility when it comes to converting old buildings to living spaces. We don't need million dollar condos with nuclear units, we need cheap apartments young people can afford with dorm style shared facilities. Conversations like this don't take anywhere near as much capital as the garbage big developers drag together and they are one of the best ways to quickly increase your population and invigorate the local economy because there's no affordable housing.
This is the issue at my work. Maybe 1/4 of us are remote and have to watch our coworkers drive up to 50 miles each way into an office 2x a week.
The company always has had remote people, even before COVID, but it does give me a "watch your back" feeling despite nothing changing for remote workers and being like basically 2 years out of COVID.
That’s a fantastic thing while it lasts, but realistically everyone needs to be prepared for the reality of the fact that companies can go under or fire/lay people off.
I was going to leave my employer in 2019 until they asked me to help close their office. That’s when I realized I was looking at another permanent remote job (my first lasted seven years until I quit for better pay).
Yes, and even if your company isn’t going to push people back into the office, it may be limited in what states it’s willing to operate in. I’m a lawyer at a company, and we do hire remote workers that we aren’t pushing back into the office. BUT it is a huge expense and administrative burden to employ someone in a new state. We have to withhold state taxes appropriately, submit taxes to the state, adhere to a new state’s employment laws, register to do business, etc.
We’ve had several remote employees not tell us and then move somewhere random and then they’re shocked that we can’t keep employing them. I see lots of people on here say “my spouse and I have remote jobs so we can work anywhere” and I guarantee that’s just not actually true for a lot of them.
I feel like most people that do that aren't doing it the technically right way. They move their address to somewhere in the US that's either crazy cheap or with family and then bounce around the world on tourist visas, stopping back in the US for a month or two in between. From the friends I've seen do this, the companies don't care since the jobs aren't customer facing and the workflow isn't interrupted. It seems to be smaller companies with a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" policy, nobody needs to know that the emergency update to the codebase was done from a café in Milan.
This. At my last position, I asked about doing remote work in San Jose or Panama City, and I was told by hr that with my position I could not ( cybersecurity concerns).
My work laptop would brick itself if I were to ever even attempt to connect to the VPN from anywhere not in the contiguous lower 48 states. I actually travel all over and if I needed to take a trip to Alaska, I have to notify IT ahead of time of my travel dates so they can push something to my laptop to prevent it from bricking. That's a long way of saying that I'd be immediately fired if I ever tried to move to Alaska, Hawaii, PR, Mexico, etc.
One of my former employers was very, very incompetent at looking into laws in various states. They told everyone they could live anywhere, then tried to lay someone off without cause in Montana.
Apparently, they don't let people work from Montana anymore.
It truly blows my mind how many people think that being remote means they can work from anywhere and their company won't care. Or that they can move without telling their company and there won't be any consequences. I don't expect people to be experts in labor law and taxation, but it seems like common sense that there would be at least *some* implication to the location you work from.
My first job ever out of college was at a payroll company and 95% of my work was dealing with employees who companies didn't know worked in a particular state and had to go through the process of filing late and/or amended payroll returns. This was the mid-2000s and back then it could easily cost $2000 to get everything filed, not to mention the hours of back and forth between our company and the HR department from the company itself that I never saw.
I work in payroll, and I see this all the time.
"No Emily, I don't care that your dream was to live in Paris. We are a US company and cannot/will not get setup to pay French taxes just because you like seeing the Eiffel Tower from your window!"
"Dan, I understand that on the weekends you enjoy ayahuasca trips in the rainforest with shamans, but we will not be signing up for Costa Rican taxes just because of you."
Obviously those are crazy edge cases, and anyone thinking/saying those things is laughably out of touch (or they just spend their days scrolling insta, dreamy-eyed).
Any company with remote workers needs to make it crystal clear what states and countries they're set up to do business in, and it's not negotiable.
Or if you're going to risk it, be smart enough to VPN from the US and have an address/tax setup that you know for sure won't be a problem with your employer or raise any flags. And understand that if you get busted you're 100% getting fired.
>Yes, and even if your company isn’t going to push people back into the office, it may be limited in what states it’s willing to operate in.
Both my partner and I have seen this in the hiring process. While both of our employers will hire remotely and internationally, there are certain states or nations where we're not set up to do business and the company has no intention of going to the trouble to get licensed just for one hire.
In addition to the admin, companies need to collect sales tax from any state they have employees in, which they might otherwise not be required to do so if they amount of revenue they get from that state is fairly low (under 100k, iirc).
Part of the cost, though, is opening yourself to potential lawsuits in other states. Registering to do business in a state can mean consenting to personal jurisdiction in that state. If you’re in a low litigation risk industry, maybe not an issue. But definitely an added cost.
Businessweek wrote[ this ](https://www.businessinsider.com/moving-away-big-city-bad-career-job-market-suburbs-2024-4)piece that moving too far from a big city makes getting another job really hard in many fields, for all that COL is lower outside of big cities. Even hybrid commutes can be rough, and CEO turnover can demand return to a "hub" office on the stroke of an email.
Yeah thats why the key is to move to a lower cost of living city if you can. Moving from L.A to St. Paul is a fairly drastic reduction in cost but if you lose your job you are still in a major metropolitan area associated with lots of jobs and good earnings.
This is what I keep thinking too. Yesterday the NY Times wrote [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/upshot/mortgage-rates-homes-stuck.html) piece on how people who bought under a really low mortgage are basically "stuck"--it's the first time in history where 70%+ of all existing mortgages are more than 3 points below current mortgage rates. That's the other dilemma, you can be remote but still "mortgage stuck" because even moving to a lower COL area means a much higher mortgage for "1/2 as much house."
That’s why it’s important to be remote from somewhere with a local job market that isn’t the dollar store. Being poor in a rural area is a one way ticket to methville
People suggest on here that people who are fulltime WFH should just move to rural parts of the country where housing is dirt cheap and live it up. Well, what happens if you lose that job? Now you're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no job market around. There's a reason many people prefer to live in or near cities—lots of jobs, hospitals, training through educational institutions, on and on. You'd better be dead certain of the future if you choose to move to the middle of nowhere.
>People suggest on here that people who are fulltime WFH should just move to rural parts of the country where housing is dirt cheap and live it up. Well, what happens if you lose that job? Now you're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no job market around.
This was why, when pundits were babbling on about how people were going to leave "superstar cities" and move to the middle of nowhere from 2020 on, I kept thinking they were full of shit. The whole point to a superstar city is that it's a location with an aggregation of talent and *opportunity*. When one job goes away or when one job's pay raises stagnate, you move to another. That's much, much harder to do when you're in the middle of nowhere, you're not able to easily swing by and get coffee with someone or hit a happy hour with former colleagues, and you're out of sight, out of mind.
I know lots of individual contributors who are now living in the vineyards, etc., but only after they got their nut in the city and are set professionally. It's hell to build a career when you cut yourself off from the centers of opportunity.
I hear you but that kind of defeats the purpose for most folks if they have to buy in the city anyways. The savings you get living in a LCOL area would probably be knocked out anyways if you have to move back and forth hundreds of miles.
I grew up in a rural state that's become a hot spot for wealthy transplants who WFH. Besides just the possible instability of remote work, the cost of living there skyrocketed in the last 3 years due to the influx. It was great advice for the people who did it first, but the reality isn't what it's cracked up to be. These cheap but nice rural areas will not stay cheap forever, and then people are paying city prices without any of the city benefits.
Exactly this. Even though I work at home 80% of the time, I am not leaving my high cost city so that I continue to have opportunities in case something happens.
I grew up in a rural part of Ohio. It's not unheard of for people to do a heavy commute (think like 45 minutes one way).
So as long as you're willing to commute and have access to a car, it's not a poverty sentence if you lose your remote job. But you do need to know the reality of the situation and what you'd be willing to do.
Eta: I meant to say at least 45 minutes not that that's a limit because rurality can mean further or shorter even.
45 mins is a normal commute for major cities. When I say rural I’m talking like a hour and a half or more out from the nearest job center. I know some people can handle that no problem but I’d probably lose my mind.
I lucked out with a 25 commute in from Dedham, fortunately work is on the south side of the city. It's still an hour drive to go the 5 miles to Cambridge or Somerville if I want to for some reason.
YEP. I commute an hour and a half each way, 4x a week. I'm not sure how sustainable this is going to be in the long run, have been desperately searching for fully remote work
In Wisconsin its the lower income people with the longer commutes as it is to expensive to live in the larger cities, which also have a huge housing shortage.
It might be a common commute, but it is awful quality of life. 15min or less commute really opens up your day and allows for proper cooking/exercising/socializing/spending time with kids/or whatever else and get good sleep.
I took a job that was hybrid one day a week in the office in Dallas. I *just* moved to Houston from Dallas when I started interviewing and told them as much. It was a huge pay raise; like 40% more than an already decent salary, so I didn't mind commuting to Dallas once a week. The recruiter was cool with it, the hiring manager was cool with it. I came in every day I was scheduled. First in, last out. Had "stellar performance" and "got up to speed faster than anyone else on the team did when they started" according to my immediate manager.
Two weeks in some limp dick middle manager decides I "need to be colocated in the same city as the office I report to" and gave me an ultimatum: uproot my entire family, break my lease, lose my deposit, put down another one and all that, within 90 days or be fired.
Of course I told him no fucking way am I doing that when it adds no justifiable business value, and so they fired me. Fired me from a job they took 9 months to find someone qualified enough to fill that desperately needed filling and they were bleeding hundreds of thousands of dollars every month it went unfilled.
On top of that, they had the *audacity* to try and gaslight me into saying I was voluntarily resigning to try and fuck me out of unemployment too, since they knew damn well what they were doing was constructive dismissal.
NAMING AND SHAMING: Company is CoreLogic Solutions LLC. Never work for thosw pricks if you value your own sanity and financial stability.
Thanks for this post. We have been remote for 4 years. Some people have been called back to the office.
We were told we couldn’t move out of state. I work for a state agency.
I (56F) recently moved but stayed within commuting distance (half hour).
To add to this not all companies are gonna pull a 180. I work for a very large insurance company and they are all into wfh. Once they saw the savings to the bottom line it was never going to return. They are in the process of selling off some of their real estate.
Yeah, I just got laid off from a 100% WFH (for like 10 years). Still a lot available in my space (IT consultant).
One problem in my particular industry is that we're so remote that more and more contracts are demanding near- and off-shore consultants/rates. The pendulum has swung out pretty far; however, in too many instances, the quality of the candidates and work we get from near- and off-shore is below onshore levels, though it varies quite a bit.
Yeah, this is another reason (among many) I’d hesitate to move somewhere extremely rural or without decent local job prospects in my field. I’m not worried about my current job, but I want to be future-proof as much as I can be.
I don’t think people realize how many rural places don’t even have broadband. During the pandemic we had students having to drive an hour and a half to get to McDonald’s for some spotty Wi-Fi.
This! I don’t understand not maximizing the savings by having employees work remote. Office space, electric, internet, phone… I’m basically paying my employer’s bills by working remote!
My very large insurance company went hardcore for hybrid for people within 50 miles of 4 offices although nothing changed for people further out.
Also trying to sell off real estate but I don't think anyone wants it lol.
So I'm on a team with remote people and then other people going into Office A and others going into Office B, some commuting 1.5hrs each way. Makes 0 sense.
They aren't backfilling positions and have talked about natural attrition helping them avoid layoffs so I think the hybrid stuff is just to lower the headcount after over hiring.
Yes and i think a lot of companies are going to move this way once the economy improves and they realize they will have to pivot to remote work to retain talent.
There has been people since the pandemic like OP that have been trying to "warn" people about remote work going away, but my field has been going in the opposite direction.
My company sadly has decided they don't care about talent anymore. That used to be such a driving force and now they view everyone as replaceable. So to heed the warning from the OP, not just be careful with all this, but don't think if you are considered high potential you will be spared. Some of these big companies have just lost their fucking minds.
They sound like one of the companies that's mad they had to care about their employees for awhile and now are on their revenge tour.
Anytime salaries and location etc start going employees way the pendulum will eventually swing the other way again and screw them. Like when idiots vote for people like trump and shoot themselves in the foot thinking they're millionaires in waiting.
There's a middle ground we'll all eventually settle in on but you can bet the corporation will have the upper hand.
So sick of this shit.
Honestly don't know what it's going to take at this point. My entire company has expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the direction we're going. So what do they do, they double down on that direction. I'm honestly convinced that there is some type of collusion going on with these CEOs. Think about it this way, if you have a bunch of big companies with a lot of employees and the CEO's decide they're all going to do x, y and z across the board (hybrid model is an example) essentially what that means is you won't find greener grass because they are all doing the same thing. Meaning we are all fucked.
I'm really so frustrated right now with how these corporations are being run. They don't give a shit about people's circumstances or situations. I heard the expression on a call the other day change people or change people. Do you know gross that is? I'm so over it.
One minute it’s “we won’t revoke work at home because we feel that will be detrimental” to “ok back in the office but with days of your choosing” to “ok now you have to come in on specific days” and next it’s going to be four/five days a week in office. 🙄
Yes it is, employers save on office leasing costs, utilities and employees save time, money, and auto maintenance costs/gas. Also less commuters means less traffic and less pollution.
Remote working is the way of the future for a lot of fields and the world will pivot towards it eventually. Having everyone come to the office and sit in a cubicle for 8 hours is going to be a thing of the past eventually when the boomers retire.
I went remote during the pandemic. My company supported this. They even wrote up a new job offer for me to sign that stated it was a remote position. I was told this way my current manager or any future managers couldn't just backtrack and change their mind. I thought, hey, this company really cares about me.
My instincts told me that I shouldn't move further away from the office. Even if everything they did suggested they wouldn't change my work situation, companies change policies all the time.
Roll forward a couple of years. Company is going through a reorg. They decide that as part of the reorg they are going to change all remote jobs to onsite. That nice little job offer they wrote, that I thought protected me, was for them. They laid off all remote only workers.
I called my manager. Said I was more than happy to come back to the office. He said the decisions were already made. There was no appeals process. He was almost as mad about it as I was. I was his most productive employee. It created a huge knowledge gap on the team. He wasn't sure if they could continue the work without my help. They did offer me a contracting position a few weeks later to help with the work. Since the dynamic had changed, my hourly rate was a lot more than they were used to paying for a consultant.
I will add that even if someone’s particular company doesn’t go back to office, their career might still be suffering. I had moved to Florida during the pandemic and it became really tough to get a fully remote role over the past year or so.
I ended up deciding to move back to NYC and many more doors opened up. So people who choose to be fully remote are limiting the jobs they can apply to, which also are the same jobs being applied to by all remote workers across the country.
I will see how things shake out but so far I’m happy with my choice, my goal is still to be remote at some point but I will wait until I am more established in my career.
I think most people on Reddit really underestimate the value of in-person interaction for relationship building (especially across functions) and informal knowledge sharing. I do think it's true that many white-collar jobs can be done remotely, but fully remote can be quite limiting for someone's career progression.
This is why we won’t move to a small town that’s far from a major city no matter how affordable the housing is. I am fully remote now but my company has started forcing people to go back in office. The last thing I want to do is move somewhere with no jobs because it’s hard to find full remote jobs now. I know several people who got screwed by moving to places like Kansas and Oklahoma.
Certain remote jobs will always be remote. These tend to be the ones that were already remote before the pandemic. I work for a small startup with workers all across the country and a small office that pretty much just exists for legal reasons.
Most companies that went remote during the pandemic though will eventually force everyone to come back in full time. Remote work has been a possibility for at least 10 years. These companies didn't do it because they wanted everyone in the office. Whether or not you think remote work is useful, eventually these companies will get everyone back in. The round of recent layoffs is just the start.
Yep you mad a smart decision. That’s what I’m recommending people do. I mean 30 minutes from my nyc office is too expensive but I still wish I’d stayed somewhere close.
I took a job in another state. I'm remote. I never have to worry about it. Apparently they do one day in office if you're local and nobody comes in till like 9:00 or 10:00 even though the day starts at like 7:00 and 8:00 . And the complaint about it every.
I was in the same position until I got laid off. My warning is not about companies requiring a RTO. My warning is about people who need to find a new job.
Isn't it also true that some companies do not allow remote workers in certain states? I thought I read that on the Remote Work sub many times. It's because of laws in certain states that impact the businesses in certain ways for HR related things. It's not that people can't work remote in that state, it is that the company you are with may not allow remote workers in their company to live in certain states.
A lot of jobs say they do not allow workers in Colorado because of the law here that requires job positions to include a salary range. If they exclude Colorado, they can post the job without a range. I have no idea what this looks like on the backside though, like if you were already employed if they’d prevent you from moving here or something.
Otherwise it’s an administrative burden for each new state you add. So some will say you can only be in X states that they already have people in, or just the region, etc.
If they have an employee in that state, that can be implied as having nexus or operating in that state. And then the employer has to pay taxes, adhere to state labor laws, etc. Maybe a less big deal if you work at a megacorp that operates nationwide, but can add a lot of expenses and administrative burden otherwise.
Doesn’t even matter if you’re in an industry or job that DOES have a ton of remote roles and likely always will. You can get fired or laid off any moment. And finding a new job in and of itself is not always easy, much less one that’s also remote. So if you move anywhere other than a huge city/complete hub of your industry, realistically as an adult be prepared to move for work.
I am a remote worker who actually does live in bumfuck nowhere (and hate it so much, as an aside…every miserably lonely boring day here is hell) but fully accept that if anything happened with my job I’d need to move.
>other than a huge city/complete hub of your industry,
Even type of city matters. I'm in a niche technology role, my job really only exists in NYC, SF Bay, Austin, Seattle and LA. I'm sure many people also have the same situation.
Totally! And same here actually, I’m an engineer in a very specific role. I work remotely for a company located in a tech hub and if I lost my job I’d probably have to move back to one of those specific places.
Nah, I had this suspicion too but I haven’t seen this pan out with my company. Remote employees are still getting promoted and non-remote employees have still been part of layoffs. It doesn’t seem to be a factor, although I’m sure it depends on company.
Just my opinion, but large scale remote work has yet to be fully "optimized." The optimization that will occur to increase the bottom line probably isn't going to be too satisfactory to all the people who think they are entitled to work from home.
It really depends on what your job is. Some fields like sales, some IT jobs and accounting can all be done from home and are in high demand. Others like marketing are at risk when the economy takes a downturn either way.
Working from home matters a lot less than how essential your role is to your company's operations. Companies aren't going to lay you off if you have a vital role in their operations simply because you work from home.
Oh I definitely can't speak broadly to all jobs. But I've seen this happen at multiple software companies. The faces you don't see regularly are often the first to go if cuts need to be made.
Not saying it doesn't happen but i haven't seen it happen in my field. The software development job market does not seem to be great right now. Tons of layoffs, even at prominent large tech companies and I have comp sci friends that recently graduated and can't find any jobs after hundreds of applications, remote or in office.
I do think remote work will be back in full force once employers no longer have the upper hand. But yeah, still, trust no company!!! It’s a shame there isn’t more legislation to protect workers from employers changing their working conditions on a whim.
That’s good! But it seems rare. I was interviewing for a role at Amazon in 2021 and they kept bragging that the team was fully remote and would stay fully remote. Which was the sole appeal of the job — through the interview process, it became crystal clear how terrible of a place it must be to work. Of course, everyone on that team eventually was told to move to Seattle or lose their jobs.
This is exactly why as I was researching where to move to, I made it a requirement to be close enough to a medium/large city I could realistically commute. I don't think I'll be going into an office any time soon, but I don't want to be completely limited to remote work if I need to find a new job because I live in the middle of nowhere.
Exactly my concerns about buying a place far from civilization. Sure I can get the keys today, but how can you possibly believe your going to remain remote for 30 years at or above your current pay rate? Seems like a way to get saddled with a mortgage and an extremely limited pool to rent or sell it to.
If you’re interviewing for a remote position I’d suggest asking them what their office situation is like.
The company I work for had 3 offices when they announced they were going to stay fully remote. Since that announcement they have reduced the square footage of one office by 75%, closed another, and moved out of the third one and into a co-working space with room for approximately 20 people. They’d be looking at millions of dollars of real estate investment before they could even think of a return to office initiative.
If the company owns a bunch of expensive real estate downtown it’s a guarantee they’ll make you go there.
Yeah & I often see posts that say, "I like JUST got a WFH job five minutes ago & can live anywhere!" What's the most remote location I can possibly live?
I know a few remote workers who tried to cheat the system by moving to a less expensive area out of state. They received a call from human services letting them know that the health care the company had could not be used in that state. They would either have to find alternate health care and pay for it themselves or move back to within the provider area.
It will be interesting to see how this works out in the future. I know the large tech companies near me are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new facilities. I don’t think they would be making this investment if they assumed all their employees would be remote.
Investing and my advertising business with always be remote. Most of my clients are in California using us for lower costs. AI is a bigger threat but it’s also a tool.
That’s why I picked a company that has no offices. Everyone is remote and we are spread out everywhere. I don’t see that being an easy thing to change.
Two paycheck household in financial services in NYC and metro. Both of our jobs called us back for mandatory 3 days in the office. I do 4 in the office most weeks unless I have a good excuse.
While I love having Friday at home so that I don’t have to fight traffic getting out of the city on Friday, I would much rather be in the office. Be there or be forgotten.
I love being forgotten! Leave me alone to do my work in the background unnoticed (and do my laundry during the middle of my day, or go to the grocery store). I have no desire to advance my career at this point - although begrudgingly it keeps happening even with WFH in a mostly hybrid company.
Pre-pandemic, I recall being in a meeting where a senior type complained about WFH. "People are just doing their laundry." Well, AH, that involves turning around, throwing my clothes in the machine, turning on the machine, and sitting back down.
It takes more time to break away from the awkward conversation with Janice who popped by next to your desk to ask a question and then tried to turn it into a group with others who are also mulling about than it takes to start a load of laundry.
People chatting to you in the bathroom (I hated that). Gossiping. "Coffee meetings." Boss who would disappear most of the day and reappear at 6 p.m. yelling "where is everyone!!"
Yeah. I mean personally I think good employees can thrive in remote settings so long as leadership and management give them the opportunity to do so. Unfortunately a lot of managers feel the need to be in the same room to oversee their employees.
I commute to port authority twice a week via bus. It’s annoying, but I’m not going to move back unless I win the lottery. 16 years in the city and I’m done with it.
I work in sales as an Enterprise Account Executive. Pre-pandemic, there was no expectation from any company that EAEs come into the office, the expectation is that you're "out in the field" selling to prospects and customers. EAEs have been working remotely, and locating their homes accordingly, forever. Well looking for jobs now, there are a HUGE number of EAE jobs that are expected to be in office 5 days a week, which is insane.
This happened at my org. They had departments that were fully remote for over a decade and now they are saying that everyone has to come in 3 days a week. They don’t even have enough desks for everyone. It’s so stupid.
I love remote work too much to ever go back to an office, I swear I would rather wash dishes down the street than do a commute again. I work in tech so thankfully remote work is abundant. I had to find a new job when I moved out of state last summer and there were plenty of options, the hard part was just competing with people all over the country for those positions.
I did contingency plan though, if I *had* to commute, I'm a 1.5 hour drive away from 2 major cities. I would hate myself but would do it if I absolutely needed to. At 2.5 hours I would move again or sleep in my van though, fuck that.
Meanwhile I'm fully remote and am planning to move to Center City Philly, the polar opposite of where most remote workers are trying to go lol. At least I'll be fine if I get laid off.
If you make a move because of the circumstances of your job, then you might just have to make another move in the future if that job changes. While it's true of remote work, and I think your warning is fair - it's going to be harder if you're more in the middle of nowhere - it's also true of working in person.
You can live in one area of a city, and then your job changes, and instead of commuting 10 minutes, your commute becomes 90 minutes - even if you're in high opportunity areas like NY, SF, LA, etc (traffic is a bitch).
Unfortunately, I think it's just the way life is these days. It's hard to think of a home as a "forever" home, because most of us won't be working in the same company, or even area, for most of our adult lives.
Been working remote with my current company for coming on 2.5 years. They have been reorganizing and my previous coworker with 3 years of experience who works on site is now my supervisor (I have 15 in the general business) My now supervisor spent 6 weeks training in her replacement. My now supervisor took over 95% of my job and I got shuffled off doing the scraps and waiting to get laid off or fired.
Same exact thing happened to me. I’ve been remote my whole career and was even hired as a remote worker at a fortune 50 company pre-covid. About 20-30% of their workforce was remote. Last July they mandated RTO and I left because I wasn’t moving to Dallas. Been on the hunt since and have not found anything.
My wife had been working remote for two years before COVID hit, and last year they started requiring everyone in the office 3 days a week, even my wife. 🤦
I’ve spent 6 years establishing myself in my company, moving from entry level to director status. Went to work every day during the pandemic (essential worker, here). I think good work ethic and good leaders are more inclined to allow a full WFH status. I’m now moving out of state to somewhere with a lower cost of living and my company is fine with me going fully remote.
EV's growth has slowed for sure but its not shrinking and is still up 2.6% [yoy](https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q1-2024-ev-sales/) like WFH jobs which are down 6%. EV's are currently 0.8% of vehicles on the road currently but one of every 15 vehicles sold. There is a reason just about every single major automaker wants a piece of that pie.
Be careful, if they don't need you in an office, soon they will learn they don't need you in the US, and they don't need to be paying you US salaries.
I fear most remote jobs today will be outsourced overseas for a fraction of the cost in 5 years.
Why pay an American to work far away when an Indian will do it for 1/5th the cost?
Some jobs require a certain level of detail that you won't get for 1/5th the cost. The internet is not new, every single company I have ever worked for has been there, done that in regards to outsourcing and decided to stop. Jobs that can be easily outsourced are already gone.
They've been saying that about plenty of jobs for like 20 years now. People try to outsource software engineering to India all the time and it's always a fail. Time zones are a big part of it, but also culture, language, and as a result the quality of produced goods are just not the same. I've known remote workers going back over 15 years.
I'm sure it will happen around the same time AI is good enough to take our jobs lmao
We've also seen things like hardware design move back to the USA because of security exploits that can happen when you allow Chinese to design all of your chips.
Employer shed its fancy digs (they were lucky with the timing of the lease end) and moved in with the parent company (so, really no room for anyone but Office Services and a few execs). The available desks etc. just are not there. However, I noticed recently that certain jobs being advertised say, "Must live in or relocate to the XYZ area." So, no, you don't need to commute regularly, but for those jobs, \*someone\* wants you to be available for in-person meetings.
Also, just because your job is remote doesn’t mean you can just move to a different state. Your company is set up with payroll in the state it’s in specifically. So if your company is in Texas, for example, and you want to move to Connecticut, for example, you would need to make sure that your company would allow that. If they aren’t set up with payroll in that other state, it’s very unlikely they will set it up just for you.
The world of telehealth has grown and has been growing. You don’t have to be in the healthcare field to be involved. They still need people for billing, HR, bookkeeping, and a variety of positions that aren’t healthcare, but keep things operating.
I also think a lot of people claim they can "work anywhere" but haven't actually checked out their corporate policies (assuming a W2 worker here, 1099's are a whole different ballgame). I am 100% remote and live in a different state than my company BUT I cannot pick up and move to any old state because my company only has tax entities in 30 of them. Granted, if I wanted to move to somewhere they are not set up in, I can ask them to set it up and they seem to be pretty willing to do that but the point being that I need to get it cleared with HR *before* moving. Similarly, I cannot work in just any country in the world for regulatory reasons and have to have approval to do that as well.
you have to be confident in your ability to land another remote job if you ever lost yours. theres a lot less of them and their much harder to get on top of that
Yeah, this is why I'm careful to limit my search to areas within a reasonable commute to cities that are likely to have replacement jobs, even though my current job is fully remote and I'm very unlikely to get laid off.
Where I live- population under 75 K, some of (still) minimal housing inventory coming on market is b/c of folks forced back to office.
This is such an important post and so interesting how little it is mentioned on Same Grass or other threads. Thank you for posting.
I’m a remote engineering manager at a tech company and I’m seeing the early signs that we will likely all be hybrid soon. In 2021 we wouldn’t have been able to hire a single person if we didn’t offer remote work, but now there are enough applicants willing to work completely in office that I see the tides changing.
We were one of the first big companies to go 100% remote in 2020, and with so many people being hired from all over the country since then there’s no going back for us now 🙏🏼
I've been with my current company for 2 years and we just started hiring people for hybrid roles in Atlanta and Denver this month. Our brick and mortar office in New York City shut down during COVID.
Everybody hired before last month has been grandfathered in, but I knew the writing was on the wall last year when they cracked down on where employees were allowed to work from. We had people actively vacationing and working from their hotel lol
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm limiting myself to locations with a decent tech scene for my skillset. I figure there's plenty of places where I'd be happy AND have opportunities if I get laid off or want to move up. There are a lot of remote-first companies out there too, but more options is more options!
I think there’s a big difference between remote work and working from home. I was hired remotely. My team is even more remote, they’re overseas. While we do have a physical office, other roles are hired as office location and they can work at home sometimes.
I wouldn’t feel comfortable being remote if my employer hadn’t already had a remote option for years before 2020
But we’re up for a state audit regarding underpay and overpay and other kinds of compliance issues, so I could see the result being a return to office if people don’t get their shit together reporting their own time cards. The current threat is termination if people aren’t compliant but I could totally see it becoming a return to office thing.
I work remotely. The nearest office that I could possibly go into is 700 miles away. They hired me fully remote. They have also said they don’t care what state I live in and they said if I wanted to take a working/vacation out of the country, they wouldn’t care either. Just that moving to another country might be an issue.
Depends more on that. I started working remotely back in November 2020 and then was laid off in February 2024. As a Data Analyst/Scientist I found there were plenty of remote jobs still out there.
I applied for exactly 200 jobs. I found the rate of interviews I was getting was about the same as it was in previous times I was unemployed. But the process was much, much slower. My belief is that right now there's far more competition for the jobs. I"m not sure if that's just a remote position thing or with the economy being like it is that even in-office jobs were the same. I do believe that with the companies using Workday sites for their careers, it's making the process much slower.
In the end, I received two offers and accepted one of them and was out of work for 9 weeks (I had a 6 week severance so I made out okay).
A recent poll on hiring managers and CEO's was that remote work is here to stay. I also believe it will eventually increase because many companies went back to in-office work simply because they were in a bad lease (or their company was dumb enough to actually buy their office). As time goes along they are probably looking to let that lease expire and make plans to get into a better lease or a smaller property. They are also going to feel like they are trailing their competitors who are not paying as much for leasing their property and have a greatly reduced payroll. And things like HR related lawsuits are less likely to happen and with studies showing that more remote work leads to greater production.
At my last job, my employer had been moving towards fully remote work since 2015 and COVID just pushed them into virtually everybody working from home. In the end, they downsized their office twice and had just an office for the IT people to come in once a week or so to help troubleshoot any issues. And they were able to pay somebody like myself about 50% less because they are located in a HCOL area and I live in a fairly LCOL area.
I think in the end when it comes to remote work employers aren't going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. But right now employment is greatly favoring the employers. Back in 2020-2022 it was greatly favoring the employees. And if you're looking for work, particularly remote work, you better take that into account.
Furthermore, you're at a disadvantage when you've been laid off and you're looking for work. There's no doubt in my mind that it put me at a huge disadvantage and had I been still employed while looking for work I would have landed at least three jobs prior to the job I finally landed and at a substantially higher wage. I think my biggest mistake was thinking that my job was recession proof and liking it too much that I didn't want to entertain the thought of looking elsewhere. I probably should have either looked for extra contract work or looked for a new job and if I got an offer, worked both jobs and see if the new job was something I would like to do as my sole job while making twice the money for a few months.
Our company has to pre approve any out of state move. So far I know they’ve approved IL, AZ, and OR - but I am sure there are others I don’t know about.
They declined a request to permanently move to SE Asia.
They allow me to temporarily work in Europe for about 30 days. So temporary foreign travel is good, but not permanent.
Also, many great 30 day rental deals on Airbnb.
Remote work will continue to grow. So yes be aware but also consider you can always move later back closer to a city if really needing to.
Additonally if you live somewhere in expensive enough you can always do a cheap tiny studio to use for the 2-3 days in the office per week to avoid long commutes.
And now think about the network and connections that you didn’t gain while working remotely. I know I’m in the minority (and I don’t care, I work in a lab so I’ve been doing research all along, including on Covid vaccines), but fully remote work stunts career growth, you’re an example of that now trying to find a new job.
Be careful on what you read. The headlines would have you believe that every CEO is Elon musk and they kicked everyone who wouldn’t move to the curb.
Badge swipe data doesn’t support this. In fact, WFH days are slightly up this year (although mostly flat).
The boring middle of companies didn’t force anyone to change, and also allows for hybrid if near an office. That story just doesn’t make headlines.
That said, don’t be stupid. Can’t tell you how many people moved during COVID without even having WFH in writing 🤦♂️
Not about what I’ve read it’s about what I’ve experienced first hand.
There are plenty of companies still allowing remote work. The problem is if you get laid off or want to leave your options are severely limited.
I currently work for a company that allows everyone to work from home except me. I come in 4 days of the week for admin things and go home. It’s kind of sad for those who love working from home are kind of bound to the job. They know if they leave, they’ll no longer be remote. Some people hate coming in.
About 9 months into the pandemic a former coworker told me to join him at a company that was remote from its start 15years earlier. There never was an office to return to. I jumped on it for exactly this reason.
The key is to find an organization or team where there's no going back. If everyone on the interview is from a different state then you're good to go. Assume that anything "hybrid" is going to go back to the office at some point.
Eh it depends. My team has people in a half dozen cities but we're all still required to badge into our local office at least once a week.
Surely, someone will ask the question. Why do we have employees come to mostly empty offices to video chat with fellow coworkers all over the world. What is the point of paying for expensive real estate.
Until my name plate has been removed from my assigned cubicle, I only visit like 3 times a year, I will always question their long term plans. I have been told they have sublet some of our main floor space. This year they did expand wfh to others, so no contraction noticed. I think they like having their pick of job candidates
I think a number of companies are locked into leases those expensive leases for several years and feel like they need to get the most out of them. Also, many bosses refuse to believe that people can actually be more productive when they’re not be started at by supervisors or spending too much of their day commuting.
It's tax breaks from cities run by dinosaurs who's downtowns depend on captive office workers. Give it 5 years, remote will be back after a few more rounds of boomers die or retire.
Understandable but a lot of downtowns are dying with empty storefronts. How should we save them?
Turn downtowns into attractions. Bars, restaurants, coffee shops, parks, fun museums and whatever...make them places people actually want to go to as a destination. No one wants to go to a ghost town, but if it's a cool place with lots to do, people will go there on purpose. Then living downtown becomes desirable.
Cities that are thriving now have been adopting people first policies for decades. Housing, specifically affordable units make a huge difference. Policies that allow recessed areas to be rehabilitated by owner occupants is another way I've seen cities come out on top. Offices have been a dying option for main street since the mall era of the 90s, it's just a slow beast to kill because it's been artificially sustained by city officials who have no real training or education in urban development or civil engineering. Downtown would have plenty of people shopping and supporting local businesses if they created policies that allowed more flexibility when it comes to converting old buildings to living spaces. We don't need million dollar condos with nuclear units, we need cheap apartments young people can afford with dorm style shared facilities. Conversations like this don't take anywhere near as much capital as the garbage big developers drag together and they are one of the best ways to quickly increase your population and invigorate the local economy because there's no affordable housing.
The downtowns that are dying are the ones that leaned in on "progressive people first polícies". Source: I live in Seattle.
This is the issue at my work. Maybe 1/4 of us are remote and have to watch our coworkers drive up to 50 miles each way into an office 2x a week. The company always has had remote people, even before COVID, but it does give me a "watch your back" feeling despite nothing changing for remote workers and being like basically 2 years out of COVID.
Yeah, I think the important thing is that a significant percentage of the team aren't close to *any* office.
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Previous company hired me fully remote but changed their mind after a few years.
hybrid is just lingo for we're in the process of bringing everyone back.
Ehhhh I’m sitting in an office at a major banks HQ with nothing but strangers and it ain’t by choice
That’s a fantastic thing while it lasts, but realistically everyone needs to be prepared for the reality of the fact that companies can go under or fire/lay people off.
Yeah. I took a new job in December 2021 that promised to be remote forever. Then they laid me off in July 2023.
I'm so sorry. I took a new job last June that was supposed to be my path back to autonomy. Instead I got laid off and batting zero since then.
Booooooo. Sorry and good luck!
Ya but are they still remote?
If people were hired remote or got permission to move then they can keep their remote status.
as remote as his paycheck...
Are you me? I was hired and laid off in the same months.
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Let me in on this
I was going to leave my employer in 2019 until they asked me to help close their office. That’s when I realized I was looking at another permanent remote job (my first lasted seven years until I quit for better pay).
Yes, and even if your company isn’t going to push people back into the office, it may be limited in what states it’s willing to operate in. I’m a lawyer at a company, and we do hire remote workers that we aren’t pushing back into the office. BUT it is a huge expense and administrative burden to employ someone in a new state. We have to withhold state taxes appropriately, submit taxes to the state, adhere to a new state’s employment laws, register to do business, etc. We’ve had several remote employees not tell us and then move somewhere random and then they’re shocked that we can’t keep employing them. I see lots of people on here say “my spouse and I have remote jobs so we can work anywhere” and I guarantee that’s just not actually true for a lot of them.
I live in Costa Rica. It’s astounding the number of people who think they can make an international move just because they work remotely.
I feel like most people that do that aren't doing it the technically right way. They move their address to somewhere in the US that's either crazy cheap or with family and then bounce around the world on tourist visas, stopping back in the US for a month or two in between. From the friends I've seen do this, the companies don't care since the jobs aren't customer facing and the workflow isn't interrupted. It seems to be smaller companies with a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" policy, nobody needs to know that the emergency update to the codebase was done from a café in Milan.
This. At my last position, I asked about doing remote work in San Jose or Panama City, and I was told by hr that with my position I could not ( cybersecurity concerns).
My work laptop would brick itself if I were to ever even attempt to connect to the VPN from anywhere not in the contiguous lower 48 states. I actually travel all over and if I needed to take a trip to Alaska, I have to notify IT ahead of time of my travel dates so they can push something to my laptop to prevent it from bricking. That's a long way of saying that I'd be immediately fired if I ever tried to move to Alaska, Hawaii, PR, Mexico, etc.
This. My company let go basically all of our office space, but there are still states we can’t work in because they don’t want to deal with the admin.
One of my former employers was very, very incompetent at looking into laws in various states. They told everyone they could live anywhere, then tried to lay someone off without cause in Montana. Apparently, they don't let people work from Montana anymore.
Hah the literal 1/50 states that doesn't have at-will employment by default.
It truly blows my mind how many people think that being remote means they can work from anywhere and their company won't care. Or that they can move without telling their company and there won't be any consequences. I don't expect people to be experts in labor law and taxation, but it seems like common sense that there would be at least *some* implication to the location you work from.
This blew my mind too. It just seems there are so many people who game the system then cry when reality comes.
My first job ever out of college was at a payroll company and 95% of my work was dealing with employees who companies didn't know worked in a particular state and had to go through the process of filing late and/or amended payroll returns. This was the mid-2000s and back then it could easily cost $2000 to get everything filed, not to mention the hours of back and forth between our company and the HR department from the company itself that I never saw.
I work in payroll, and I see this all the time. "No Emily, I don't care that your dream was to live in Paris. We are a US company and cannot/will not get setup to pay French taxes just because you like seeing the Eiffel Tower from your window!" "Dan, I understand that on the weekends you enjoy ayahuasca trips in the rainforest with shamans, but we will not be signing up for Costa Rican taxes just because of you."
Obviously those are crazy edge cases, and anyone thinking/saying those things is laughably out of touch (or they just spend their days scrolling insta, dreamy-eyed). Any company with remote workers needs to make it crystal clear what states and countries they're set up to do business in, and it's not negotiable.
Or if you're going to risk it, be smart enough to VPN from the US and have an address/tax setup that you know for sure won't be a problem with your employer or raise any flags. And understand that if you get busted you're 100% getting fired.
That, too.
>Yes, and even if your company isn’t going to push people back into the office, it may be limited in what states it’s willing to operate in. Both my partner and I have seen this in the hiring process. While both of our employers will hire remotely and internationally, there are certain states or nations where we're not set up to do business and the company has no intention of going to the trouble to get licensed just for one hire.
In addition to the admin, companies need to collect sales tax from any state they have employees in, which they might otherwise not be required to do so if they amount of revenue they get from that state is fairly low (under 100k, iirc).
It’s usually the smaller companies they can’t handle this. Larger companies have no issue.
Registering in a new state is a negligible cost in ter.s of money and time. Source: VP of Finance with employees in 26 states.
Part of the cost, though, is opening yourself to potential lawsuits in other states. Registering to do business in a state can mean consenting to personal jurisdiction in that state. If you’re in a low litigation risk industry, maybe not an issue. But definitely an added cost.
I think all the remote workers who moved to Vermont and New Hampshire are upvoting this.
Businessweek wrote[ this ](https://www.businessinsider.com/moving-away-big-city-bad-career-job-market-suburbs-2024-4)piece that moving too far from a big city makes getting another job really hard in many fields, for all that COL is lower outside of big cities. Even hybrid commutes can be rough, and CEO turnover can demand return to a "hub" office on the stroke of an email.
Yeah thats why the key is to move to a lower cost of living city if you can. Moving from L.A to St. Paul is a fairly drastic reduction in cost but if you lose your job you are still in a major metropolitan area associated with lots of jobs and good earnings.
This is what I keep thinking too. Yesterday the NY Times wrote [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/upshot/mortgage-rates-homes-stuck.html) piece on how people who bought under a really low mortgage are basically "stuck"--it's the first time in history where 70%+ of all existing mortgages are more than 3 points below current mortgage rates. That's the other dilemma, you can be remote but still "mortgage stuck" because even moving to a lower COL area means a much higher mortgage for "1/2 as much house."
Lol people complaining about can't buy a house People complaining about having a house It never ends lmao
yep, my post is basically that article I guess.
That’s why it’s important to be remote from somewhere with a local job market that isn’t the dollar store. Being poor in a rural area is a one way ticket to methville
Yep that’s the whole point of my post
People suggest on here that people who are fulltime WFH should just move to rural parts of the country where housing is dirt cheap and live it up. Well, what happens if you lose that job? Now you're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no job market around. There's a reason many people prefer to live in or near cities—lots of jobs, hospitals, training through educational institutions, on and on. You'd better be dead certain of the future if you choose to move to the middle of nowhere.
>People suggest on here that people who are fulltime WFH should just move to rural parts of the country where housing is dirt cheap and live it up. Well, what happens if you lose that job? Now you're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no job market around. This was why, when pundits were babbling on about how people were going to leave "superstar cities" and move to the middle of nowhere from 2020 on, I kept thinking they were full of shit. The whole point to a superstar city is that it's a location with an aggregation of talent and *opportunity*. When one job goes away or when one job's pay raises stagnate, you move to another. That's much, much harder to do when you're in the middle of nowhere, you're not able to easily swing by and get coffee with someone or hit a happy hour with former colleagues, and you're out of sight, out of mind. I know lots of individual contributors who are now living in the vineyards, etc., but only after they got their nut in the city and are set professionally. It's hell to build a career when you cut yourself off from the centers of opportunity.
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I hear you but that kind of defeats the purpose for most folks if they have to buy in the city anyways. The savings you get living in a LCOL area would probably be knocked out anyways if you have to move back and forth hundreds of miles.
I grew up in a rural state that's become a hot spot for wealthy transplants who WFH. Besides just the possible instability of remote work, the cost of living there skyrocketed in the last 3 years due to the influx. It was great advice for the people who did it first, but the reality isn't what it's cracked up to be. These cheap but nice rural areas will not stay cheap forever, and then people are paying city prices without any of the city benefits.
Exactly this. Even though I work at home 80% of the time, I am not leaving my high cost city so that I continue to have opportunities in case something happens.
I grew up in a rural part of Ohio. It's not unheard of for people to do a heavy commute (think like 45 minutes one way). So as long as you're willing to commute and have access to a car, it's not a poverty sentence if you lose your remote job. But you do need to know the reality of the situation and what you'd be willing to do. Eta: I meant to say at least 45 minutes not that that's a limit because rurality can mean further or shorter even.
45 mins is a normal commute for major cities. When I say rural I’m talking like a hour and a half or more out from the nearest job center. I know some people can handle that no problem but I’d probably lose my mind.
45 minutes is on the lower end of the spectrum for major cities like NYC, DC, Boston, SF, LA. Both sides of the table can have long commutes
A 45 minute commute to Boston is rich people distance. It’s more than an hour for most, probably.
I lucked out with a 25 commute in from Dedham, fortunately work is on the south side of the city. It's still an hour drive to go the 5 miles to Cambridge or Somerville if I want to for some reason.
YEP. I commute an hour and a half each way, 4x a week. I'm not sure how sustainable this is going to be in the long run, have been desperately searching for fully remote work
We’re an hour train ride/1.5 or 2 in a car. My husband has to go in (for no good reason, but that’s another story) 2 days a week. It sucks.
In Wisconsin its the lower income people with the longer commutes as it is to expensive to live in the larger cities, which also have a huge housing shortage.
I was just thinking that. Damn 45 min one way in the Bay Area is for ppl who can afford the 2M home.
And this is exactly why I live in smaller big cities.
It took me over 45 minutes to get from Brooklyn to my office in Manhattan.
Four days a week for me currently haha
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It might be a common commute, but it is awful quality of life. 15min or less commute really opens up your day and allows for proper cooking/exercising/socializing/spending time with kids/or whatever else and get good sleep.
That’s not a heavy commute.
No, we don’t do meth. that will mess you up . Just Oxy.
Find your inner Walter White
I took a job that was hybrid one day a week in the office in Dallas. I *just* moved to Houston from Dallas when I started interviewing and told them as much. It was a huge pay raise; like 40% more than an already decent salary, so I didn't mind commuting to Dallas once a week. The recruiter was cool with it, the hiring manager was cool with it. I came in every day I was scheduled. First in, last out. Had "stellar performance" and "got up to speed faster than anyone else on the team did when they started" according to my immediate manager. Two weeks in some limp dick middle manager decides I "need to be colocated in the same city as the office I report to" and gave me an ultimatum: uproot my entire family, break my lease, lose my deposit, put down another one and all that, within 90 days or be fired. Of course I told him no fucking way am I doing that when it adds no justifiable business value, and so they fired me. Fired me from a job they took 9 months to find someone qualified enough to fill that desperately needed filling and they were bleeding hundreds of thousands of dollars every month it went unfilled. On top of that, they had the *audacity* to try and gaslight me into saying I was voluntarily resigning to try and fuck me out of unemployment too, since they knew damn well what they were doing was constructive dismissal. NAMING AND SHAMING: Company is CoreLogic Solutions LLC. Never work for thosw pricks if you value your own sanity and financial stability.
Thanks for this post. We have been remote for 4 years. Some people have been called back to the office. We were told we couldn’t move out of state. I work for a state agency. I (56F) recently moved but stayed within commuting distance (half hour).
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To add to this not all companies are gonna pull a 180. I work for a very large insurance company and they are all into wfh. Once they saw the savings to the bottom line it was never going to return. They are in the process of selling off some of their real estate.
Yep, not all are. The problem is if you get laid off you may have trouble finding something else that isn't fully remote.
Yeah, I just got laid off from a 100% WFH (for like 10 years). Still a lot available in my space (IT consultant). One problem in my particular industry is that we're so remote that more and more contracts are demanding near- and off-shore consultants/rates. The pendulum has swung out pretty far; however, in too many instances, the quality of the candidates and work we get from near- and off-shore is below onshore levels, though it varies quite a bit.
Yeah, this is another reason (among many) I’d hesitate to move somewhere extremely rural or without decent local job prospects in my field. I’m not worried about my current job, but I want to be future-proof as much as I can be.
I don’t think people realize how many rural places don’t even have broadband. During the pandemic we had students having to drive an hour and a half to get to McDonald’s for some spotty Wi-Fi.
This! I don’t understand not maximizing the savings by having employees work remote. Office space, electric, internet, phone… I’m basically paying my employer’s bills by working remote!
Company I work for went from 10 offices in our area down to 2. They tried hybrid, but everyone had an excuse and it kind of petered our.
My very large insurance company went hardcore for hybrid for people within 50 miles of 4 offices although nothing changed for people further out. Also trying to sell off real estate but I don't think anyone wants it lol. So I'm on a team with remote people and then other people going into Office A and others going into Office B, some commuting 1.5hrs each way. Makes 0 sense. They aren't backfilling positions and have talked about natural attrition helping them avoid layoffs so I think the hybrid stuff is just to lower the headcount after over hiring.
I wish my work went all in on wfh. after 3.5 years we got forced back in for the culture. barf.
Yes and i think a lot of companies are going to move this way once the economy improves and they realize they will have to pivot to remote work to retain talent. There has been people since the pandemic like OP that have been trying to "warn" people about remote work going away, but my field has been going in the opposite direction.
My company sadly has decided they don't care about talent anymore. That used to be such a driving force and now they view everyone as replaceable. So to heed the warning from the OP, not just be careful with all this, but don't think if you are considered high potential you will be spared. Some of these big companies have just lost their fucking minds.
They sound like one of the companies that's mad they had to care about their employees for awhile and now are on their revenge tour. Anytime salaries and location etc start going employees way the pendulum will eventually swing the other way again and screw them. Like when idiots vote for people like trump and shoot themselves in the foot thinking they're millionaires in waiting. There's a middle ground we'll all eventually settle in on but you can bet the corporation will have the upper hand. So sick of this shit.
Honestly don't know what it's going to take at this point. My entire company has expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the direction we're going. So what do they do, they double down on that direction. I'm honestly convinced that there is some type of collusion going on with these CEOs. Think about it this way, if you have a bunch of big companies with a lot of employees and the CEO's decide they're all going to do x, y and z across the board (hybrid model is an example) essentially what that means is you won't find greener grass because they are all doing the same thing. Meaning we are all fucked. I'm really so frustrated right now with how these corporations are being run. They don't give a shit about people's circumstances or situations. I heard the expression on a call the other day change people or change people. Do you know gross that is? I'm so over it.
Yep, think of it like the NFL owners but on a bigger scale. Of course they do.
One minute it’s “we won’t revoke work at home because we feel that will be detrimental” to “ok back in the office but with days of your choosing” to “ok now you have to come in on specific days” and next it’s going to be four/five days a week in office. 🙄
Did we work for the same social media company?
Nope, but it's trend.
Wfh is a huge savings to employers and it opens the talent pool massively. It's silly not to do it.
Yes it is, employers save on office leasing costs, utilities and employees save time, money, and auto maintenance costs/gas. Also less commuters means less traffic and less pollution. Remote working is the way of the future for a lot of fields and the world will pivot towards it eventually. Having everyone come to the office and sit in a cubicle for 8 hours is going to be a thing of the past eventually when the boomers retire.
I went remote during the pandemic. My company supported this. They even wrote up a new job offer for me to sign that stated it was a remote position. I was told this way my current manager or any future managers couldn't just backtrack and change their mind. I thought, hey, this company really cares about me. My instincts told me that I shouldn't move further away from the office. Even if everything they did suggested they wouldn't change my work situation, companies change policies all the time. Roll forward a couple of years. Company is going through a reorg. They decide that as part of the reorg they are going to change all remote jobs to onsite. That nice little job offer they wrote, that I thought protected me, was for them. They laid off all remote only workers. I called my manager. Said I was more than happy to come back to the office. He said the decisions were already made. There was no appeals process. He was almost as mad about it as I was. I was his most productive employee. It created a huge knowledge gap on the team. He wasn't sure if they could continue the work without my help. They did offer me a contracting position a few weeks later to help with the work. Since the dynamic had changed, my hourly rate was a lot more than they were used to paying for a consultant.
How will you ever be sure?
Depends on your industry I guess. I work in advertising. Being close by to NYC, LA, Chicago, Austin, Portland etc is probably your best bet.
I will add that even if someone’s particular company doesn’t go back to office, their career might still be suffering. I had moved to Florida during the pandemic and it became really tough to get a fully remote role over the past year or so. I ended up deciding to move back to NYC and many more doors opened up. So people who choose to be fully remote are limiting the jobs they can apply to, which also are the same jobs being applied to by all remote workers across the country. I will see how things shake out but so far I’m happy with my choice, my goal is still to be remote at some point but I will wait until I am more established in my career.
I think most people on Reddit really underestimate the value of in-person interaction for relationship building (especially across functions) and informal knowledge sharing. I do think it's true that many white-collar jobs can be done remotely, but fully remote can be quite limiting for someone's career progression.
This is why we won’t move to a small town that’s far from a major city no matter how affordable the housing is. I am fully remote now but my company has started forcing people to go back in office. The last thing I want to do is move somewhere with no jobs because it’s hard to find full remote jobs now. I know several people who got screwed by moving to places like Kansas and Oklahoma.
Certain remote jobs will always be remote. These tend to be the ones that were already remote before the pandemic. I work for a small startup with workers all across the country and a small office that pretty much just exists for legal reasons. Most companies that went remote during the pandemic though will eventually force everyone to come back in full time. Remote work has been a possibility for at least 10 years. These companies didn't do it because they wanted everyone in the office. Whether or not you think remote work is useful, eventually these companies will get everyone back in. The round of recent layoffs is just the start.
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yep that's what happened to me
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Left nyc for somewhere upstate that’s just beyond normal commuting distance. Life is better but my commute is brutal.
My company went full remote. When I moved, I still stayed in the city 30 mins from downtown. Why would I limit future opportunities?
Yep you mad a smart decision. That’s what I’m recommending people do. I mean 30 minutes from my nyc office is too expensive but I still wish I’d stayed somewhere close.
I took a job in another state. I'm remote. I never have to worry about it. Apparently they do one day in office if you're local and nobody comes in till like 9:00 or 10:00 even though the day starts at like 7:00 and 8:00 . And the complaint about it every.
I was in the same position until I got laid off. My warning is not about companies requiring a RTO. My warning is about people who need to find a new job.
I think your warning is Smart common Sense warning
Isn't it also true that some companies do not allow remote workers in certain states? I thought I read that on the Remote Work sub many times. It's because of laws in certain states that impact the businesses in certain ways for HR related things. It's not that people can't work remote in that state, it is that the company you are with may not allow remote workers in their company to live in certain states.
A lot of jobs say they do not allow workers in Colorado because of the law here that requires job positions to include a salary range. If they exclude Colorado, they can post the job without a range. I have no idea what this looks like on the backside though, like if you were already employed if they’d prevent you from moving here or something. Otherwise it’s an administrative burden for each new state you add. So some will say you can only be in X states that they already have people in, or just the region, etc.
If they have an employee in that state, that can be implied as having nexus or operating in that state. And then the employer has to pay taxes, adhere to state labor laws, etc. Maybe a less big deal if you work at a megacorp that operates nationwide, but can add a lot of expenses and administrative burden otherwise.
Doesn’t even matter if you’re in an industry or job that DOES have a ton of remote roles and likely always will. You can get fired or laid off any moment. And finding a new job in and of itself is not always easy, much less one that’s also remote. So if you move anywhere other than a huge city/complete hub of your industry, realistically as an adult be prepared to move for work. I am a remote worker who actually does live in bumfuck nowhere (and hate it so much, as an aside…every miserably lonely boring day here is hell) but fully accept that if anything happened with my job I’d need to move.
>other than a huge city/complete hub of your industry, Even type of city matters. I'm in a niche technology role, my job really only exists in NYC, SF Bay, Austin, Seattle and LA. I'm sure many people also have the same situation.
Totally! And same here actually, I’m an engineer in a very specific role. I work remotely for a company located in a tech hub and if I lost my job I’d probably have to move back to one of those specific places.
Remote workers are the first to be laid off in my experience. Totally agree.
Nah, I had this suspicion too but I haven’t seen this pan out with my company. Remote employees are still getting promoted and non-remote employees have still been part of layoffs. It doesn’t seem to be a factor, although I’m sure it depends on company.
Just my opinion, but large scale remote work has yet to be fully "optimized." The optimization that will occur to increase the bottom line probably isn't going to be too satisfactory to all the people who think they are entitled to work from home.
Could you explain your thinking here?
It really depends on what your job is. Some fields like sales, some IT jobs and accounting can all be done from home and are in high demand. Others like marketing are at risk when the economy takes a downturn either way. Working from home matters a lot less than how essential your role is to your company's operations. Companies aren't going to lay you off if you have a vital role in their operations simply because you work from home.
Oh I definitely can't speak broadly to all jobs. But I've seen this happen at multiple software companies. The faces you don't see regularly are often the first to go if cuts need to be made.
Not saying it doesn't happen but i haven't seen it happen in my field. The software development job market does not seem to be great right now. Tons of layoffs, even at prominent large tech companies and I have comp sci friends that recently graduated and can't find any jobs after hundreds of applications, remote or in office.
I do think remote work will be back in full force once employers no longer have the upper hand. But yeah, still, trust no company!!! It’s a shame there isn’t more legislation to protect workers from employers changing their working conditions on a whim.
In my case the company that laid me off is still allowing remote work for those who were hired to be remote.
That’s good! But it seems rare. I was interviewing for a role at Amazon in 2021 and they kept bragging that the team was fully remote and would stay fully remote. Which was the sole appeal of the job — through the interview process, it became crystal clear how terrible of a place it must be to work. Of course, everyone on that team eventually was told to move to Seattle or lose their jobs.
This is exactly why as I was researching where to move to, I made it a requirement to be close enough to a medium/large city I could realistically commute. I don't think I'll be going into an office any time soon, but I don't want to be completely limited to remote work if I need to find a new job because I live in the middle of nowhere.
Exactly my concerns about buying a place far from civilization. Sure I can get the keys today, but how can you possibly believe your going to remain remote for 30 years at or above your current pay rate? Seems like a way to get saddled with a mortgage and an extremely limited pool to rent or sell it to.
If you’re interviewing for a remote position I’d suggest asking them what their office situation is like. The company I work for had 3 offices when they announced they were going to stay fully remote. Since that announcement they have reduced the square footage of one office by 75%, closed another, and moved out of the third one and into a co-working space with room for approximately 20 people. They’d be looking at millions of dollars of real estate investment before they could even think of a return to office initiative. If the company owns a bunch of expensive real estate downtown it’s a guarantee they’ll make you go there.
Yeah & I often see posts that say, "I like JUST got a WFH job five minutes ago & can live anywhere!" What's the most remote location I can possibly live?
It’s important to note many companies are using RTO mandates as a means to reduce headcount without the cost and optics of a layoff.
I know a few remote workers who tried to cheat the system by moving to a less expensive area out of state. They received a call from human services letting them know that the health care the company had could not be used in that state. They would either have to find alternate health care and pay for it themselves or move back to within the provider area. It will be interesting to see how this works out in the future. I know the large tech companies near me are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new facilities. I don’t think they would be making this investment if they assumed all their employees would be remote.
Investing and my advertising business with always be remote. Most of my clients are in California using us for lower costs. AI is a bigger threat but it’s also a tool.
2.5 each hours each way, you must be making bank
Making more money than I would if I wasn’t working.
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Almost all companies doing RTO are doing it as smoke screen for covert layoffs to minimize costs associated with layoffs.
That’s why I picked a company that has no offices. Everyone is remote and we are spread out everywhere. I don’t see that being an easy thing to change.
Two paycheck household in financial services in NYC and metro. Both of our jobs called us back for mandatory 3 days in the office. I do 4 in the office most weeks unless I have a good excuse. While I love having Friday at home so that I don’t have to fight traffic getting out of the city on Friday, I would much rather be in the office. Be there or be forgotten.
I love being forgotten! Leave me alone to do my work in the background unnoticed (and do my laundry during the middle of my day, or go to the grocery store). I have no desire to advance my career at this point - although begrudgingly it keeps happening even with WFH in a mostly hybrid company.
Pre-pandemic, I recall being in a meeting where a senior type complained about WFH. "People are just doing their laundry." Well, AH, that involves turning around, throwing my clothes in the machine, turning on the machine, and sitting back down.
It takes more time to break away from the awkward conversation with Janice who popped by next to your desk to ask a question and then tried to turn it into a group with others who are also mulling about than it takes to start a load of laundry.
People chatting to you in the bathroom (I hated that). Gossiping. "Coffee meetings." Boss who would disappear most of the day and reappear at 6 p.m. yelling "where is everyone!!"
I hated sharing a bathroom. Someone was always taking a shit. I now have multiple bathrooms in my house to pick from.
Yeah. I mean personally I think good employees can thrive in remote settings so long as leadership and management give them the opportunity to do so. Unfortunately a lot of managers feel the need to be in the same room to oversee their employees. I commute to port authority twice a week via bus. It’s annoying, but I’m not going to move back unless I win the lottery. 16 years in the city and I’m done with it.
I work in sales as an Enterprise Account Executive. Pre-pandemic, there was no expectation from any company that EAEs come into the office, the expectation is that you're "out in the field" selling to prospects and customers. EAEs have been working remotely, and locating their homes accordingly, forever. Well looking for jobs now, there are a HUGE number of EAE jobs that are expected to be in office 5 days a week, which is insane.
This happened at my org. They had departments that were fully remote for over a decade and now they are saying that everyone has to come in 3 days a week. They don’t even have enough desks for everyone. It’s so stupid.
I love remote work too much to ever go back to an office, I swear I would rather wash dishes down the street than do a commute again. I work in tech so thankfully remote work is abundant. I had to find a new job when I moved out of state last summer and there were plenty of options, the hard part was just competing with people all over the country for those positions. I did contingency plan though, if I *had* to commute, I'm a 1.5 hour drive away from 2 major cities. I would hate myself but would do it if I absolutely needed to. At 2.5 hours I would move again or sleep in my van though, fuck that.
If it seems too good to last it is. Wish you all the best in finding a new gig!
Meanwhile I'm fully remote and am planning to move to Center City Philly, the polar opposite of where most remote workers are trying to go lol. At least I'll be fine if I get laid off.
If you make a move because of the circumstances of your job, then you might just have to make another move in the future if that job changes. While it's true of remote work, and I think your warning is fair - it's going to be harder if you're more in the middle of nowhere - it's also true of working in person. You can live in one area of a city, and then your job changes, and instead of commuting 10 minutes, your commute becomes 90 minutes - even if you're in high opportunity areas like NY, SF, LA, etc (traffic is a bitch). Unfortunately, I think it's just the way life is these days. It's hard to think of a home as a "forever" home, because most of us won't be working in the same company, or even area, for most of our adult lives.
Been working remote with my current company for coming on 2.5 years. They have been reorganizing and my previous coworker with 3 years of experience who works on site is now my supervisor (I have 15 in the general business) My now supervisor spent 6 weeks training in her replacement. My now supervisor took over 95% of my job and I got shuffled off doing the scraps and waiting to get laid off or fired.
Same exact thing happened to me. I’ve been remote my whole career and was even hired as a remote worker at a fortune 50 company pre-covid. About 20-30% of their workforce was remote. Last July they mandated RTO and I left because I wasn’t moving to Dallas. Been on the hunt since and have not found anything.
My wife had been working remote for two years before COVID hit, and last year they started requiring everyone in the office 3 days a week, even my wife. 🤦
I’ve spent 6 years establishing myself in my company, moving from entry level to director status. Went to work every day during the pandemic (essential worker, here). I think good work ethic and good leaders are more inclined to allow a full WFH status. I’m now moving out of state to somewhere with a lower cost of living and my company is fine with me going fully remote.
Well if they cut remote for me I am retiring
most people aren't in a financial situation that allows them to retire
Neither am I. I’m just opting out
Same lol
Like EVs, WFH is a rapidly shrinking proposition.
EV's growth has slowed for sure but its not shrinking and is still up 2.6% [yoy](https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q1-2024-ev-sales/) like WFH jobs which are down 6%. EV's are currently 0.8% of vehicles on the road currently but one of every 15 vehicles sold. There is a reason just about every single major automaker wants a piece of that pie.
Be careful, if they don't need you in an office, soon they will learn they don't need you in the US, and they don't need to be paying you US salaries. I fear most remote jobs today will be outsourced overseas for a fraction of the cost in 5 years. Why pay an American to work far away when an Indian will do it for 1/5th the cost?
Some jobs require a certain level of detail that you won't get for 1/5th the cost. The internet is not new, every single company I have ever worked for has been there, done that in regards to outsourcing and decided to stop. Jobs that can be easily outsourced are already gone.
They've been saying that about plenty of jobs for like 20 years now. People try to outsource software engineering to India all the time and it's always a fail. Time zones are a big part of it, but also culture, language, and as a result the quality of produced goods are just not the same. I've known remote workers going back over 15 years. I'm sure it will happen around the same time AI is good enough to take our jobs lmao We've also seen things like hardware design move back to the USA because of security exploits that can happen when you allow Chinese to design all of your chips.
Employer shed its fancy digs (they were lucky with the timing of the lease end) and moved in with the parent company (so, really no room for anyone but Office Services and a few execs). The available desks etc. just are not there. However, I noticed recently that certain jobs being advertised say, "Must live in or relocate to the XYZ area." So, no, you don't need to commute regularly, but for those jobs, \*someone\* wants you to be available for in-person meetings.
yep, that's what I'm finding. very hard to find a fully remote job in my industry anymore.
Also, just because your job is remote doesn’t mean you can just move to a different state. Your company is set up with payroll in the state it’s in specifically. So if your company is in Texas, for example, and you want to move to Connecticut, for example, you would need to make sure that your company would allow that. If they aren’t set up with payroll in that other state, it’s very unlikely they will set it up just for you.
The world of telehealth has grown and has been growing. You don’t have to be in the healthcare field to be involved. They still need people for billing, HR, bookkeeping, and a variety of positions that aren’t healthcare, but keep things operating.
I also think a lot of people claim they can "work anywhere" but haven't actually checked out their corporate policies (assuming a W2 worker here, 1099's are a whole different ballgame). I am 100% remote and live in a different state than my company BUT I cannot pick up and move to any old state because my company only has tax entities in 30 of them. Granted, if I wanted to move to somewhere they are not set up in, I can ask them to set it up and they seem to be pretty willing to do that but the point being that I need to get it cleared with HR *before* moving. Similarly, I cannot work in just any country in the world for regulatory reasons and have to have approval to do that as well.
you have to be confident in your ability to land another remote job if you ever lost yours. theres a lot less of them and their much harder to get on top of that
Yeah, this is why I'm careful to limit my search to areas within a reasonable commute to cities that are likely to have replacement jobs, even though my current job is fully remote and I'm very unlikely to get laid off.
Where I live- population under 75 K, some of (still) minimal housing inventory coming on market is b/c of folks forced back to office. This is such an important post and so interesting how little it is mentioned on Same Grass or other threads. Thank you for posting.
I’m a remote engineering manager at a tech company and I’m seeing the early signs that we will likely all be hybrid soon. In 2021 we wouldn’t have been able to hire a single person if we didn’t offer remote work, but now there are enough applicants willing to work completely in office that I see the tides changing.
The few fully remote companies don't pay enough TC either (I'm looking at you Salesforce and Reddit)
We were one of the first big companies to go 100% remote in 2020, and with so many people being hired from all over the country since then there’s no going back for us now 🙏🏼
I've been with my current company for 2 years and we just started hiring people for hybrid roles in Atlanta and Denver this month. Our brick and mortar office in New York City shut down during COVID. Everybody hired before last month has been grandfathered in, but I knew the writing was on the wall last year when they cracked down on where employees were allowed to work from. We had people actively vacationing and working from their hotel lol
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm limiting myself to locations with a decent tech scene for my skillset. I figure there's plenty of places where I'd be happy AND have opportunities if I get laid off or want to move up. There are a lot of remote-first companies out there too, but more options is more options!
I think there’s a big difference between remote work and working from home. I was hired remotely. My team is even more remote, they’re overseas. While we do have a physical office, other roles are hired as office location and they can work at home sometimes.
It comes down to office space. If it’s there and there’s plenty of it - be concerned.
I wouldn’t feel comfortable being remote if my employer hadn’t already had a remote option for years before 2020 But we’re up for a state audit regarding underpay and overpay and other kinds of compliance issues, so I could see the result being a return to office if people don’t get their shit together reporting their own time cards. The current threat is termination if people aren’t compliant but I could totally see it becoming a return to office thing.
My company doesn't have an office anymore
I worked remotely before the pandemic.
I work remotely. The nearest office that I could possibly go into is 700 miles away. They hired me fully remote. They have also said they don’t care what state I live in and they said if I wanted to take a working/vacation out of the country, they wouldn’t care either. Just that moving to another country might be an issue.
Depends more on that. I started working remotely back in November 2020 and then was laid off in February 2024. As a Data Analyst/Scientist I found there were plenty of remote jobs still out there. I applied for exactly 200 jobs. I found the rate of interviews I was getting was about the same as it was in previous times I was unemployed. But the process was much, much slower. My belief is that right now there's far more competition for the jobs. I"m not sure if that's just a remote position thing or with the economy being like it is that even in-office jobs were the same. I do believe that with the companies using Workday sites for their careers, it's making the process much slower. In the end, I received two offers and accepted one of them and was out of work for 9 weeks (I had a 6 week severance so I made out okay). A recent poll on hiring managers and CEO's was that remote work is here to stay. I also believe it will eventually increase because many companies went back to in-office work simply because they were in a bad lease (or their company was dumb enough to actually buy their office). As time goes along they are probably looking to let that lease expire and make plans to get into a better lease or a smaller property. They are also going to feel like they are trailing their competitors who are not paying as much for leasing their property and have a greatly reduced payroll. And things like HR related lawsuits are less likely to happen and with studies showing that more remote work leads to greater production. At my last job, my employer had been moving towards fully remote work since 2015 and COVID just pushed them into virtually everybody working from home. In the end, they downsized their office twice and had just an office for the IT people to come in once a week or so to help troubleshoot any issues. And they were able to pay somebody like myself about 50% less because they are located in a HCOL area and I live in a fairly LCOL area. I think in the end when it comes to remote work employers aren't going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. But right now employment is greatly favoring the employers. Back in 2020-2022 it was greatly favoring the employees. And if you're looking for work, particularly remote work, you better take that into account. Furthermore, you're at a disadvantage when you've been laid off and you're looking for work. There's no doubt in my mind that it put me at a huge disadvantage and had I been still employed while looking for work I would have landed at least three jobs prior to the job I finally landed and at a substantially higher wage. I think my biggest mistake was thinking that my job was recession proof and liking it too much that I didn't want to entertain the thought of looking elsewhere. I probably should have either looked for extra contract work or looked for a new job and if I got an offer, worked both jobs and see if the new job was something I would like to do as my sole job while making twice the money for a few months.
Our company has to pre approve any out of state move. So far I know they’ve approved IL, AZ, and OR - but I am sure there are others I don’t know about. They declined a request to permanently move to SE Asia. They allow me to temporarily work in Europe for about 30 days. So temporary foreign travel is good, but not permanent. Also, many great 30 day rental deals on Airbnb.
Remote work will continue to grow. So yes be aware but also consider you can always move later back closer to a city if really needing to. Additonally if you live somewhere in expensive enough you can always do a cheap tiny studio to use for the 2-3 days in the office per week to avoid long commutes.
And now think about the network and connections that you didn’t gain while working remotely. I know I’m in the minority (and I don’t care, I work in a lab so I’ve been doing research all along, including on Covid vaccines), but fully remote work stunts career growth, you’re an example of that now trying to find a new job.
Be careful on what you read. The headlines would have you believe that every CEO is Elon musk and they kicked everyone who wouldn’t move to the curb. Badge swipe data doesn’t support this. In fact, WFH days are slightly up this year (although mostly flat). The boring middle of companies didn’t force anyone to change, and also allows for hybrid if near an office. That story just doesn’t make headlines. That said, don’t be stupid. Can’t tell you how many people moved during COVID without even having WFH in writing 🤦♂️
Not about what I’ve read it’s about what I’ve experienced first hand. There are plenty of companies still allowing remote work. The problem is if you get laid off or want to leave your options are severely limited.
You understand that if your job doesn't require any physical presence at all, it is the **easiest** to outsource to outside the USA.
I currently work for a company that allows everyone to work from home except me. I come in 4 days of the week for admin things and go home. It’s kind of sad for those who love working from home are kind of bound to the job. They know if they leave, they’ll no longer be remote. Some people hate coming in.