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Comment by hackissimo123 | Hacker News Reader

I'm applying to jobs now (in the UK) and I'm yet to speak to a single company that plans on a full return to the pre-pandemic normal. Everyone is either staying 100% remote indefinitely, or they're hoping to adopt a hybrid approach like what you describe.

It's a bad time to own city-centre commercial real estate.

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For most people who have proven they can productively work remote, it's sort of a no-brainer. Even if they don't want to move to the mountains or otherwise go 100% remote, most people will at least want the flexibility to commute fewer days and spend some days at home/out-of-the-office for all sorts of reasons. (As well as more flexibility in how close they need to be to an office.)

This wasn't my experience. Most companies I talked to planned on having 1-2 days in the office per week. A few were planning on 100% remote.

I bet a lot aren't being open about how remote they will be also, to avoid putting people off.

I expect a lot of companies just don't really know how things are going to play out right now. So, unless you know that a position can be 100% remote for all time, the conservative thing to do is to basically say "You're going to have to live somewhere that allows you to commute in a couple of days a week." You don't want to put yourself in a position where you've told someone they can live anywhere in the country they want and then, in nine months, tell them "Just kidding. You need to move to London."

That doesn't contradict what I said. "Remote-first" was more common in my experience too than "100% remote".

Notably, the market is such that a skilled candidate going in and explicitly negotiating how remote they want to be has a good shot at getting it approved. At least if aiming for e.g. 80% remote.

It's also notable that now being someone with longer experience in working remote - especially managing remote teams - has suddenly become a very valuable skill.

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