Nobody's stopping you from moving closer to the office, and incentivizing people to move further away is the last thing we should do
Yes, rent 5 minutes from the office is likely very high, and it's much cheaper two hours away, and that's why most people live far away. But that is already a factor in salaries. If the office is in a high-cost-of-living area they have to offer higher salaries to get an equal caliber of workers.
>Nobody's stopping you from moving closer to the office
the stiff housing market indeed is. You can't buy land that isn't for sale.
Nevermind that most people cannot just up and move whenever their work fancies it. And you don't want to. Too many horror stories of people who moved for their job only to get laid off a few months later. Corporate isn't taking my community with them.
>If the office is in a high-cost-of-living area they have to offer higher salaries to get an equal caliber of workers.
This definitely is not how it works. There are a ton of companies in Irvine for example that vastly underpay their developers compared to the cost of living in the area. And if you were to assume that's how it works, then companies should be offering salary increases for RTO which is very obviously not happening.
Companies that underpay compared to cost of living exist everywhere, even in the cheap places. They usually end up with the people who can't get or don't want a better paying job.
And yes, companies should be paying salary increases for RTO if they hired on the promise of remote work. Not doing that will just means you now offer worse compensation compared to job conditions and are going to lose some people to greener pastures. Which might be a factor in Microsoft's timing: less job mobility right now
Yes, rent 5 minutes from the office is likely very high, and it's much cheaper two hours away, and that's why most people live far away. But that is already a factor in salaries. If the office is in a high-cost-of-living area they have to offer higher salaries to get an equal caliber of workers.