But that’s exactly how it works. If you are willing to make the trade off for what you value more then go for it. Many do not want to make the pay or job tradeoff and come into office, and many others (myself included for many cases) think coming in to office is generally good.
Remote is not more attractive to everyone and everyone doesn’t have the same economics on the trade offs.
That’s exactly why it doesn’t work. Leaving our rights to the market to decide does not work. It never has.
Why? Because for the vast majority of people, employers have almost all of the negotiating power. What this means is the market is slowly shaped by what employers want, not employees. Because we need a job more than they need our labor.
It’s naive to think the market is a level playing field and if employees want something they just vote with their labor and the market will adapt. That’s just not true. Most people don’t have the ability to change jobs on a whim to play the market with their livelihoods.
It works fine for tech and most white collar jobs. You can indeed vote with your feet unless you make very poor financial decisions (or have too high of needs) for most of these careers.
Remote is not more attractive to everyone and everyone doesn’t have the same economics on the trade offs.