This is the issue with “hybrid” work. You either live somewhere where you can afford an office, or somewhere where the commute is bearable. Living somewhere where you have a dedicated office and the commute isn’t hell is a very expensive proposition in most American cities.

Agree. WFH a couple of days a week is largely nonsensical. Employers still need to pay for office space. Employees need dedicated work space in their homes and additional equipment while still needing to be located relatively close to the office.

If people's work from home days aren't coordinated it can save a lot of per worker real estate because you can go to floating desks so you only need to accommodate peak attendance instead of having a single desk for every person. The schedule can be adapted to team needs too so that people working together are in the office on the same days so they can take advantage of in person collaboration when needed.

That is the preferred way for me definitely. And it seems that for quite a lot of people.

I like my coworkers to be people I know in real life; I also like to code in a silent room. One way of accomplishing that would be a private office at work, but hybrid WFH is the next best thing.

You can have a full office everyday if half of the company WFH part of the week and the other half the other part.

At the cost of drastically lowered productivity per person due to hot desking, and not having the space for an all hands.

Do you mean an 'all hands on deck' emergency or an all hands meeting? If the latter that's a problem with an event space not of desk space. If it's the former you rarely actually need everyone present and it's unlikely every department will be needed at once unless the whole company is failing and even then people can work remotely for those too.

It seems impractical for employers to pay for an addition to your house if you don’t have a room (let alone moving you to an entirely new building if you don’t own).

In which case employers should just increase wages to take into account how much is saved on office space. Then workers might be able to afford larger houses or apartments.

except they're cutting salaries because apparently col is lower and they think we don't need the money were earning...

Wouldn't landlords just raise the rent to compensate?

Let's never get raises because landlords will also raise rent.

Yes, let's not all simultaneously get raises. The value of money is its inequity, not its quantity.

Yup, agreed. I vote that legerdemain doesn't get a raise, and the rest of us do.

After all, you didn't specify who should be the target of that inequity.

If the person is working remotely they have a much larger market to look for. If every white collar/knowledge worker suddenly got all the office budget and went to work from home you'd see big shocks but it could be spread throughout the country not just in cities. Of course there'd be a huge new market opportunity for turning the suddenly empty office buildings into apartments or something too.

Then let employees work from home permanently so they can afford a larger house.

Telling employees to work from home for a year but be prepared to come back to the office at any time is the worst of both worlds - they have to pay high housing prices to live within easy commute distance of the office, but meanwhile they have to work from home and may live in a very small home.

Some employees may prefer to live in or near a city for other reasons, but others would be happy to move farther away.

Even in their own offices most employers don't even provide a height-adjustable desk, or a good quality mouse and keyboard. They're not going to pay for a treadmill at home…

mmm yeah thats a good point, I was considering downsizing during the pandemic because I wasn’t using some rooms and am nomadic and hanging out at cafes and coworking spaces

but now that I’m back I can see how having the dedicated office is a luxury