I’ve seen a lot of folks come to Arizona during the pandemic, and I think more will move here. Outside of the summers, which aren’t that bad because you have A/C, and in the summer you’re an hour from being in the forest with pine trees and three hours from Flagstaff where it’s great weather year round (plus a ski mountain in the winter) you got a lot of folks from California coming & staying while looking at much more affordable housing & taxes.
Especially as Arizona has become more and more liberal/left leaning, you got less folks viewing it as hostile & enjoying the fact you have a lot of hiking/outdoor activities, rivers, lakes and camping all within a short driving distance.
As another poster said, companies aren’t going to risk lose talent in troves if they enact a work from office policy.
When you got major companies like Twitter, google, Facebook, and others already saying WFH is a permanent option that’s put pressure on others to figure out how to make it work.
Talent is needed at many, many companies and if the talent is a.) needed and b.) good enough the company will make “exceptions” to the rule.
Enough companies make enough exceptions and it’s a mainstay policy.
Overall, the other part is that companies that now offer remote work as a permanent option may not have to pay SF salaries so that’s a bonus to the company. It’ll go both ways, the company can say I’m not requiring you to live in high COL area and we have an office in X city, we pay 10% above the market average of ~35-40 cities so they’re still competitive on pay (assumption being that most companies move to this model, FAANG may overpay still but that’s always been the case) so now what do you do?
Especially as Arizona has become more and more liberal/left leaning, you got less folks viewing it as hostile & enjoying the fact you have a lot of hiking/outdoor activities, rivers, lakes and camping all within a short driving distance.