> Nobody's stopping you from moving closer to the office

Price per square meter is.

>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.

Or they just offshore it.

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

> Nobody's stopping you from moving closer to the office

Tell me you’re single in early 20s without telling you’re single in 20s.