My life philosophy aligns with my own life, my perceived abilities and the environment around me to make me happy.

I don't think anyone is born and dreams about working remote doing engineering work in front of a computer for 8 hours a day. You end up doing a venn diagram of what you like with what the world offers and you decide what your values are.

If my life philosophy would include sipping margaritas at the beach or spending my days with my friends outside building an off-grid community I'd be out of luck because I'm not rich and my friends are not rich either.

Find a job that you like because you'll get good at it and your skills will be in high demand as well. Work hard and save enough every month to be able to walk away and into the company next door if your boss turns to shit.

My grandpa passed this philosophy to me and he was a plumber from a remote village in Portugal. He'd tell me how he kept to his values and didn't work for anyone that didn't respect him. He didn't die rich but he was proud in his work. Find what that is for you.

If people focused more on this instead of needing to place themselves on either side "get max salary" or "unionize the world" things would be way better.

Life is hard. You have to sacrifice somewhere. It's unfair. Our worker's rights have been further eroded. Megacorps dominate the space with no real competition insight.

But I still believe in individual agency. There are things individuals can still do to make things better. I feel for the edge cases of people who don't have choice. But in general, people have more choice than they think.

It’s not unfair. 3 years ago no one would have pretended remote was a “right” and the reason people think workers rights have eroded is because they continue to pile on perks and nice to haves and pretend they’re rights.

It sure is unfair to say a role is remote and then change that in less than 2 years.

Either way you're missing the complete point of the post to harp on a meaningless detail. I was no way implying that remote work is a "right." I was simply pointing out how in many ways worker's rights have been diminished. One only has to look at the recent rail strike to see that, or the countless examples of wage theft, or the switching of hourly to salary to avoid paying overtime.

But despite all this we still have some agency and we should exercise it, even if things are "wrong" or "unfair." That's the point.

It’s not, we in tech are just out of touch (on average.) Jobs and their requirements change all the time and most people deal with it or find a job more to their liking.

> they continue to pile on perks and nice to haves and pretend they’re rights.

The evolution of worker rights has always followed this path. Introduced as perks, then standardized and encoded legally as rights. While there are outliers that get dunked on a lot ( eg on-site laundry at Meta) for the most part the perks have been entirely reasonable (flexible hours and schedules).

Something like: I’ve been there and didn’t expect to work fully remote at any company. Fully remote has long been a luxury afforded to the upper echelons of companies in most places. I’m sorry you fell for the meme during Covid that all jobs were remote now.

Remote work is not some fundamental human right. If your skills are not in high demand, you have no leverage to make many demands about your work arrangement.

It’s not a human right, but more like the 40h/week right most of the first world countries manage to get.