Definitely not. Remote work was the key to letting me not move for a job.

I’ve managed remote teams around the world. I know this violates the popular narrative, but remote hires generally either stayed exactly where they were or moved to bigger, expensive cities. We paid them more than they made locally so they often used the new income to move up.

I’ve only known a few people who used remote work to move to the mountains or countryside, but about half of them have moved back. It’s easy to glorify remote locations from watching movies or scrolling Instagram, but unless you have some specific draw to those locations it’s likely not as idyllic as it may sound. You could be replacing your work commute with an extra long commute to everything else you need to do, like grocery shopping.