I will try to make this as short as possible but it's a lot to explain:
I've been with a company 2.5 years now and it's a large pharma that has offices all over the world. I have coworkers in the UK, Spain, Ohio, etc. I live in the midwest region and report into the office 4 days a week (I got a work from home day last year). My boss reports to the office 3 days a week and her boss..2 days.
I only live in the Midwest right now because of the job; originally I'm from the Southeast (born and raised in SC and spent all my adult life minus the last 4 years in Atlanta). I recently went on vacation to Hawaii and upon returning to work I was telling my boss how hard it was coming back. I had met my brother in Oahu (he flew in from Thailand) for a family trip with he and my mom as we hadn't all been together in the same place in 7 years. He actually decided not to leave Oahu and found a part time job there around the time our vacation ended.
I mention this because when I told my boss how hard it was coming back her response was "Why don't you consider working there remotely?" I was shocked. It took me so long just to get 1 work from home day that I thought people who work in the same city as our office were basically held to a different standard it seems and expected to be in the office physically as much as possible. Granted, I have a coworker in Ohio but when they hired her they said she couldn't move and work in our office because she has a child. I have a colleague (not on my team) that started the same month I did but moved to Philadelphia 6 months ago because her husband got a job there; she still works for my company.
I have been having so many thoughts about bringing this topic back up. 3 desires that are fairly strong for me right now are to reduce my housing costs, experience more travel and to be able to see friends/family I left more...I would say basically in that order of importance? I was thinking if I work remote from a cheaper area this would allow me to save much more money. I could consider going back to the Atlanta area and being closer to my friends there and my mom in SC. I think this might be an easy sell because the reason for moving would be family related. Or I could try to go somewhere else (Mexico?) with surroundings I like (I would really LOVE to live near an ocean for once) and an even cheaper COL.
When I left Atlanta 4 years ago I was motivated to increase my salary...I wanted to go from 45K to 90K and be able to move back at that salary. Well I'm basically at that salary now with bonus but couldn't figure out a way to move back and keep the same salary (not much pharma work in Atl for someone with my background). Then my boss said this.
SO. Questions are: How would you approach your boss about it? Would you even consider moving back soon? (There are obvious pros to physically being in an office opposed to working remotely and being sort of 'out of sight, out of mind'.) Would you go back to the Southeast (Atlanta rents have skyrocketed since I've been gone the past 4 years!!) or risk asking to move somewhere else? If somewhere else, what place would you pick considering where my company is based (Midwest), family/friends are based (southeast), that it would need to be low enough cost to make moving there worth it, have access to a decent sized airport for flights to/within the US and Europe (I try to travel there once a year for vacation), not too many time zones away from my headquarters in midwest, etc etc?