But isn't that a textbook self-caused problem? You could live in the city and have a 5-10 minute walking commute. But you choose to live somewhere with a lower cost of living, more space, etc.. and then complain about the commute. It feels like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too, and (for OP) it's predictably backfiring.
Isn’t the cause the unnecessary requirement of onsite? This forces parent into the least of two bad options.
A cause not in your control is irrelevant. The industry is pretty clearly moving to RTO, and for cases where remote is possible, several workers in a third-world country for a fraction of your pay is clearly a better value prop.
The things you can control are 1) where you live, and 2) where you work. It's sounding more and more like the options are "live somewhere cheap and make pennies" or "live somewhere expensive and make decent salary".
People like OP stuck in the "remote or death" mindset aren't going to have much luck moving forward.
It seems common for people to struggle with something that's, to simplify, bad about the world, and to get many responses along the lines of "do x differently to deal with it." These responses may help the person or may not, and I'm completely in favor of responding pragmatically to your circumstances, but a fundamental function of the exchange should also be to change minds on the thing that's bad about the world so this happens less in the future. The individual complaints can be the trigger for that change, or can help it along, but instead usually get mired in responses which suggest individual solutions. I don't think that's smart for us in the long run.
I mean I do live in the city, 10 minutes walking doesn't actually cover that much distance. It gets me to the end of my street basically. I'm genuinely struggling to think of any US city where you wouldn't have to move any time you changed jobs to maintain a short walking commute.
Yeah of course, it depends on your city. But you're not going to have a two hour commute within city limits.
My city is conveniently on a quasi-island, so the sprawl is naturally limited -- if you get a place somewhere near the center it's a 20-minute walk to all of the "ends".