Workers left big cities for remote work. What happened next?

In 2020 as remote work boomed, many workers left big cities to live elsewhere. Maybe some of them moved to some of the best destinations for remote workers, while others eschewed urban areas for rural spots where family and friends live. But, years later, what have we learned from that movement?

Typically, famous cities have been spots where people can’t wait to live: for the lifestyle, the culture, because that’s where everything and anyone is happening. That shiny pull capital cities have always had began to dull though, once workers were limited to their cramped flatshares or tiny apartments and there was no city buzz to speak of. 

That’s when beachy coastlines and hilly countrysides started appealing to those who’d deemed themselves as forever-city-dwellers, for more than just a quiet weekend — for the long term. Now, employer and their teams are grappling with what to do about flexibility, headquarters, and the future.

Are employers leaving relocated workers behind?

The headlines were everywhere, dubbing relocation away from major cities during the early and mid-stages of the Covid-19 pandemic the big city exodus. As fully remote work gained ground, what many of us had long suspected was confirmed — for the average office worker, jobs can be done from home, from anywhere. Done just as well, if not better.

In 2021, The Economist reported that Americans were spending 60% of their working time at home, compared to 5% pre-pandemic. 

“People are working longer hours, but they report higher levels of happiness and productivity,” they noted. “As lockdowns lift, working from home is likely to stay.”

Citing the predictions of three economists, the consensus was that a return to physical office spaces for half the working week was likely, with half spent at home. Though, they pointed out that employers were less keen on this. That has proven to be the case, with the popularity of RTO mandates serving as evidence.

Of course, some employers saw this as an opportunity to shift the narrative on the future work, for the better, and went the other way too (like us at Remote, with a global workforce that’s both remote and asynchronous). 

Working across time-zones, client-facing roles, and unclear job ads

Other employers have flip-flopped between fully remote, hybrid, and fully in-office setups, trying to find a sweet spot, out of indecisiveness, or clashing approaches from senior leaders. Within countries like the US, where different states span timezones, some remote workers experienced their employers changing their minds about working across time differences.

A senior revenue analytics engineer at Remote, Callie White was based in Toronto when Covid-19 hit. After the height of the pandemic, she eventually moved to a town with a population of less than 35,000 people in 2022, which meant she wasn’t on the same timezone as her employer anymore

“I was working remotely for a company based out of Montreal while I was still living in Toronto,” she says. “Both were based in the EST timezone. Then I moved to British Columbia, which is in the PST timezone, and my employer struggled to adapt to the change in timezone, because I was in a client facing role.”

Fair enough. At that point, in an almost post-pandemic era, where for many companies remote work was shifting into hybrid models, Callie had a job search underway. But she was navigating a job market that had shifted once again, even from the pandemic norms of the year before.

“This definitely changed things, for better and worse,” she explains. “For me, being Canadian, I started looking at a lot of USA-based roles because they're in similar timezones. This also increased the salary range I was able to target.”

She adds, “However many roles, even if they are remote, won't specify if they accept applicants outside of their headquartered country. So I'm sure I wasted a lot of application time based on that.”

Employers that abruptly shift course devalue candidates’ time and effort

Despite frustrations over roles advertised as remote but without clear information on whether candidates had to be based in the same country as the employer’s HQ, searching for a remote role post-relocation had its benefits for Callie.

But she was impacted by employers who changed gears on their approach to remote working. She even found herself in a policy change that introduced an RTO mandate after several rounds of interviews. With the closest office hours away, the employer decided they couldn’t hire her after all.

“Specifically, there was one company that I interviewed with that is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is a three to four hour drive from me,” she says. “This was one of the closest companies to my location that I applied to. I made it through several rounds of interviews, and put in the time to do a technical test and presentation.”

“The whole team loved me and I got really positive feedback, but the recruiter came back and told me they’d had a recent policy change, and were requiring a return-to-office. So, they couldn't hire me. Anecdotally, I've seen that position come up on my LinkedIn many times since, and it seems that they're really struggling to hire for that role now.”

What’s holding leaders back from long-term flexibility?

The reasons employers have been less warm to the idea of flexibility are varied. Some bosses are unsure of how to manage a remote team and feel more secure in their employees abilities if they can literally see them working. This is of course misguided.

But it speaks to an adjustment period with remote working that we all experienced differently, or came to different conclusions about. Knowingly or unknowingly though, this is micromanagement,.

Other leaders feel a big part of company culture comes from in-person interaction and group collaboration in an office setting. Real, positive company culture isn’t built from being forced into the same space at any given time, though the facade of one might be.

This type of culture, dependent on in-person interaction, can become exclusionary toward marginalized workers. Some companies might be sneakily enacting soft layoffs, hoping those facing difficult commutes or who are simply unwilling to return to daily rush-hour journeys both ways, would be annoyed enough to quit.

Often, they have.

RTO mandates and the ‘to commute’ or ‘not to commute’ dilemma

Some employers ran toward pioneering new, more flexible ways of working, driven by the remote work shift. Many workers now had real-life confirmation that there was a better way to work, and many were unwilling to go back to the reality before, especially when confident in the value of their skills and experience.

For these people, flexibility is non-negotiable — companies would lose out on them if mandatory office time was part of the package.

Other workers just ignored the RTO memo, continued working from home anyway, taking a risk on what could just be a bluff but could also end in an exit meeting. They didn’t care enough either way. Their conviction in their right to flexibility, to choose where and how they work as an adult, trumped everything else.

“Your organization’s highest-performing employees want executives to focus on outcomes and accountability, not office badge swipes,” Brian Elliot argued earlier this year, in the MIT Sloan Management Review, branding RTO mandates “how to lose your best performers.”

He was right — research from Garter, published in January, found high-performers were most likely to abandon ship after an RTO announcement.

Remote-only is non-negotiable for many job seekers, city-based or not

For those who’d relocated away from cities, who called it quits once RTO mandates came into play, new job searches were the next step. With “hybrid” dotted across job ads everywhere now, finding a remote role can feel harder, even when resolute on remote-based being a must.

Still, there are specialist job boards for that, aware of the frustrations facing job seekers who value flexibility. Remote Talent for Job Seekers puts flexibility seekers in front of flexible employers, because starting off on the same page is a better use of everyone’s time.

A recruiter at Remote, Alma Ramirez echoes the idea that many job seekers are unwilling to move on flexibility.

“What I see is many candidates leaving their jobs because of RTO mandates,” she explains, based on the candidates she interviews weekly. “Not so much because they cannot make the commute. Some simply don’t want to do it.”

Remote’s 2024 Global Workforce Report shows flexibility on working location and working hours are the most sought-after employee benefits, especially when teams are expanding worldwide. It’s no surprise then that candidates aren’t following an employer’s lead on working location. Some are either negotiating for what works for them or only interviewing with, or accepting offers from, the companies that are on the same wavelength.

Maliciously complying with an RTO, but quietly quitting (while being miserable) is a popular move too — even if it leaves everyone involved unhappy, employee and employer alike.

The pursuit of work-life balance shouldn’t cost the ability to earn

Not all recloaters are set on never commuting into the office, no matter what. 

For whatever reason, some don’t feel comfortable being assertive on this requirement. Personal circumstances, a shaky job market, rising living costs, and individual caring responsibilities — where income, lack of it, or potentially months spent without it “holding out” for a remote role isn’t just about you, but about everyone that relies on you — can all push job seekers, or those already in less flexible roles, toward not rocking the boat on an RTO.

Others might not mind hybrid setups, with some time spent in an office, but would be facing high fuel or train costs to make it work now that they’re based away from company HQs in big cities.

Even if workers can make the commute costs work, they might now be facing hours of commuting time each way, which would take a direct hit to their work-life balance — something they likely relocated to improve. Commonly, both of these are issues for workers in more rural locations who’ve left a major city in this era of supposed hybrid supremacy.

RTO means employees often face unnecessary, rising commuting costs

The argument against relocation for those living in major, expensive cities, even if alternative locations are commutable, has long been that what you’ll save in rent, or in house prices, you’ll spend in yearly travel costs, if not more. Remote work removed that blocker, making the switch a no-brainer for some. 

RTO mandates not only revive that blocker, but for those who’ve already relocated, they can limit them to local work, often lacking in rural areas depending on industry. Many can’t find a remote role or local work that covers their expenses, so they feel forced to commute at a heavy financial cost. 

Even hybrid setups can push employees in commuter towns or just beyond into thousands spent on yearly travel costs. 

Hype vs reality: The remote work surge and leaving the big city

Back in April, Business Insider ran a feature titled The price of leaving a big city — “It may improve your quality of life. But good luck if you lose your job”. The piece starts out with the writer, Aki Ito, noting that she’d noticed a growing trend of Americans who’d relocated to coastal areas, leaving cities, expressing elements of regret, nostalgic for parts of what they’d “left behind.”

“Ever since hordes of Americans began fleeing big coastal cities during the pandemic,” she writes, “I've been wondering when — or if — they'd return.”

Sure that recent data (from the Census Bureau, on domestic migration) would reflect a reversal of the big city exodus, she was left surprised when still, up to mid-2023 (from mid-2022) at least, with RTO mandates and hybrid setups heating up, “the bleeding in many big metropolitan areas continued.”

“The numbers read like casualty reports: 155,000 in Los Angeles, 54,000 in San Francisco, 25,000 in Seattle,” wrote Aki.

It’s worth noting that the data also showed that metropolitan areas were experiencing upticks in people relocating to them, rather than just away from them, during the same time period. But as far as leaving the cities went, the numbers were still significant.

The piece goes on to quote an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, Moretti, who felt leaving big cities — which are often central hubs for key industries — hurts career trajectory, because “market size matters.” He’s referring to a form of job market and industry agglomeration, which works on the concept that workers need to be close to key centers of innovation for their industry. The logic is, you’ll have more options in Silicon Valley as someone in tech than away from that scene.

That may be true, but many tech workers could do their jobs from home. Whether they will is a matter of company policy, and their own determination on the matter. Virtual proximity to silicone valley doesn’t have to be less valuable than physical proximity.

Global mindsets start with one country

Whether someone regrets their pandemic-fueled move to a more rural location and now misses the buzz of the big city they left should be a lifestyle and wellbeing issue that stops there.

Career trajectories, commuting costs, and securing job roles in the first place often compound dilemmas like this. Most of the time, they don’t have too. Flexibility options, instead of RTO mandates, can go a long way to take job insecurity, rising travel costs, and a lack of personal time out of the equation. 

Companies can make flexible work happen. They can meet and exceed their goals with workers in multiple locations. Overwhelmingly, workers want the choice. Now, as before, the companies that embrace flexibility will attract the top talents who say “no” when asked to return to an office.