The great displacement is already well underway?

I feel terrible for this guy, but he really has stacked the deck against himself by moving to a rural area and refusing (or being unable) to work "on-site". He is up against every new grad and every laid off FAANG programmer clinging to the notion that they should be able to work remotely. To be clear, I'm a huge proponent of remote work but I recognize that many power dynamics have shifted in the last few years.

I could offer a number of critiques about things but instead, I'll encourage him to go back and un-delete his AI vlog content as even if he feels the ground has moved, I would likely find his interest in this topic as a positive thing. I would also recommend he move his tech vlogs to someplace where the topic was the focus rather than blending it into other important parts of his life.

Am I a bad person for laughing when I realized he ranked "Wordpress theme developer" above the "rock-bottom" of applying for a non-remote job?

(Typing this from an office.)

It feels like we're living two separate lives when it comes to remote work. If my office was a 5-10 minute walk then in-office could be fine. I used to longboard to the office and I didn't have too many complaints. But after getting 2+ hours of my day back every day, an extra hour of sleep, gas money, not having to meal prep or get take-out, and work among my at-home comforts not under wight fluorescent light and an oppressive HVAC it's really hard to imagine an in-office job getting preference over basically any remote job.

I did the hour commute thing, I hated it even when it was the norm.

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.

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.