Regarding the commute, to me it feels like the employer saying "You're going to dedicate at least 5 more hours a week to work where you won't be compensated and won't be productive".
Trying to do focused work in an open floorplan environment always felt pretty silly to me, but I never really minded being in the office, but thinking about it now...a leisurely morning walk to the park to sit in the sun with coffee before work is a hell of a lot nicer than any commute I ever had.
Going back to the office 2 or 3 out of 5 days is still better than 5 out of 5, but the amount healthy personal things that I get to "miss" don't sell it for me. I probably prefer an entire week offsite with my team once a quarter where the commute is literally a 5 minute walk from my hotel room to whatever conference / workspace we've reserved. Bonus points if the offsite is in a place that has wellness facilities so I can still spend that extra "hour" on health.
I'd be open to commuting again, but only if I'm paid for the extra time. If that makes employers pick someone else, that's fine (yes, I get I am in a privileged position to be able to afford to be that picky).
Unless the employer is forcing you to live in a particular place, your tolerance for commute vs. rent (and other lifestyle impacts of location) is saying that, not your employer. I’ve rarely seen a worksite [0] (and doubt that it is the case for any FAANG HQ job) where it was impossible to live closer than 1/2-hour one-way commute from the office.
[0] There obviously are some, and even some where the distance is much farther, but they are exceptional.
For a single person, yes, moving based on employer might make sense. I have a wife, who owns a business tied to the community. I have kids in school. I have family and social commitments in my neighbourhood. Why would I cause my whole family stress and frustration by uprooting them to reduce my commute?
It's entirely possible that I will be directed to return to the office. At that point, I will politely but firmly decline, because I was hired as a full remote employee. And then I will find a new remote job, probably in less then a month, and probably making more money, even in this market.
You presumably wouldn't, because you have a set of preferences due because of various (from your description, non-rent) lifestyle impacts of location.
Which is, if you read my upthread post, rather than lobbing insults without doing so, exactly what I was talking about.
Now, in your case rather than overriding concern for commute time (which is evidently the case for lots of other people), neither those preference nor your commute time preference arr negotiable, so you would just resign if your employer decided to make your job an onsite job. Other people wpuld choose to commute. Other people, who dislike the commute and don’t have the other factors you have holding you in place, might move closer to the office.
In any case, the employer isn’t dictating commute time, but work site. Your preferences will determine commute time if you work (or, for that matter, will determime if you continue working at all.)
If you're commuting at typical times (getting to the office somewhere between 8-9am), there aren't a whole ton of places that are 1/2 hour commute away from, say, the googleplex. The east bay can be cheaper, but anything across the Dumbarton is out because the bridge can easily take 45 minutes during commute hours on any given day.
The places that are a reliable 30 minute drive on the peninsula are pretty much NW San Jose (SJC), parts of Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Mountain View itself, Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, and Menlo Park. With commute traffic, Milpitas is too far east, Redwood City is too far west, and even Cupertino is too far south.
"Impossible to live" is of course up to definition, but if you have kids and don't yet have FU money, you might be looking really long and hard at those houses in the east bay and wondering whether the commute is really that bad (it really, really is).