Hired fully remote, now there's a three-day office mandate and I live 700 km away
Signed fourteen months ago. Remote was in the letter, and it's the whole reason I took this over a slightly better paying offer.
Announcement last week: everyone in office three days a week from October, to "rebuild collaboration".
HR's line is that relocation support is available. Relocation support doesn't cover my partner's job being here, or my parents living twenty minutes away.
I'm not naive about who holds the cards in this market. But I can't tell whether to ask for a written exception now, while replacing me is still inconvenient for them, or to just start looking quietly and let the thing play out, or both at once.
If you've been through an RTO flip: did asking for an exception ever actually work, or does it only mark you as the person who isn't on board?
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AnonymousAnon Do both, they're not in conflict. Ask for the exception and start looking the same week — a search takes months anyway, and if the exception comes through you've lost nothing but a few evenings.
The only thing I'd avoid is telling anyone you're unhappy before you have the written answer in hand.
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AnonymousAnon I asked for an exception when mine flipped and got it — verbally, from my manager. Then a new skip-level arrived about a year later and the whole thing evaporated, because there was no record of it anywhere.
If you go that route, get it into your actual employment record or in writing from someone in HR. A supportive Slack message from your manager is worth nothing once your manager changes.