At least I am not paid enough where I could just buy a bigger apartment with extra room "just because" nor do I live in an expensive city.
Even in the UK, where home prices are exorbitant right now, you can get a 4 bedroom home in the outskirts of Birmingham for the same price of a 2 bedroom flat in central Birmingham.
Heres a couple of homes to show the price difference. Note: that the prices themselves are not relevant only that they're the same.
Flat: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/132806696#/?channel=R...
House: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131243774#/?channel=R...
Nowhere close to 500k
and current median salaries for senior positions remote from London are 80k GBP
so, yeah, should be ok.
I said if you don't have to live centrally, you can put that money into a bigger house, and it pays significantly more (double the number of bedrooms, not just dedicated office space).
You dont want to do that? thats fine, but you cant pretend that its materially more expensive to have a home office if suddenly you are not geolocked.
But we all are geolocked to some extent or can you just pack up your family and announce that you are moving to Ghana because you found cheap house there? Probably not.
Of course I could take on debt and buy a bigger apartment - probably even from the same building complex - but that feels like insane solution to "going to office every week" unless again you live in America where your commute is 8 hour drive through wild gang lands where you have to be vigilant 24/7 just not to get shot.
Of course that only works if you can work from home for a London based tech company.
From my own experience, I'm very grateful to be able to do that from my home office in the UK, outside of London. I hate long commutes or living in big cities.
Either way, I don't see the point of your arguments. Nobody says that engineers who want to work from the office shouldn't be allowed to. We're just refuting the bogus argument that the office is some sort of distraction-free paradise offering ideal work conditions, compared to noisy WFH setups. Because for the vast majority of US engineers, it's rather the opposite.