Welcome to Still Monday.

You probably spend a ridiculous amount of your life working.

So we figured at least some of that time should be interesting.

Still Monday is about work, money, careers, technology, office politics, useful tools, questionable management decisions and the strange things people do between 9 and 5.

We read the reports, follow the stories and find the useful stuff so you don’t have to pretend you were going to read the 74-page PDF yourself.

We’ll try to make you smarter.

We’ll definitely try to make you laugh.

And occasionally, we may give you something worth mentioning in a meeting so everyone thinks you’re unusually well informed.

We’re here Monday through Friday. About 3–5 minutes. Free.

If that sounds useful, stay.

If it doesn’t, there’s an unsubscribe link at the bottom. You can use it now. No hard feelings.

We already have enough mandatory meetings. This shouldn’t be one of them.

Alright.

Let’s get to work.

The return-to-office debate has reached an interesting stage.

Companies are no longer arguing about whether offices are good.

They’re arguing about exactly how many days you should be sitting in one.

Airbus recently tried to move employees in Spain toward four days a week in the office.

Employees were not thrilled.

Around 40% of Airbus’s 14,000 workers in Spain took part in protests and strikes involving several issues, including remote work, wages, transportation and holidays.

And now Airbus has backed down.

Managers can continue allowing employees to work remotely up to two days a week rather than enforcing the tougher four-day office schedule, according to Reuters.

The company has perfectly reasonable arguments for wanting people together.

Airbus says face-to-face work helps collaboration and knowledge transfer. That matters especially when a large portion of the workforce is relatively new and experienced employees have knowledge that doesn’t live neatly inside a PowerPoint deck.

Employees have a reasonable argument too:

They built their lives around flexibility.

Commutes came back.

Gas came back.

Traffic definitely came back.

The five-day office week did not.

And that’s what makes the return-to-office fight more interesting than another debate about whether people are more productive wearing sweatpants.

Remote work quietly changed the economics of having a job.

Where you can live.

How far you can commute.

How much transportation costs.

When you see your kids.

Whether you can take a job 40 miles away.

Companies aren't simply asking people to change where they open their laptops.

They're renegotiating part of the employment deal.

Airbus tried.

Its employees renegotiated back.

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If you have a job, congratulations.

If you're looking for one, maybe don't open LinkedIn before coffee.

U.S. layoffs remain surprisingly low. Initial unemployment claims fell to 203,000 in the latest weekly data and unemployment sits around 4.1%.

But hiring isn't exactly having a party either.

The result is a labor market economists have been describing as something close to “no hire, no fire.”

Companies are holding onto workers.

They’re just considerably less enthusiastic about adding new ones.

A remarkably stable situation.

Unless you need a job.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York asks workers a wonderfully direct question:

How much would someone have to pay you to accept a new job?

The latest average answer is $88,387 a year.

That's the highest level on record and more than $10,000 above where the figure stood in March 2025, according to reporting on the latest Fed data.

Which makes sense.

Changing jobs means taking a risk.

New boss. New expectations. New commute. New coworkers. New Slack channels.

There should be compensation for at least two of those.

Companies are flattening management structures, particularly in tech.

That has created more “player-coach” managers: people expected to manage teams while also doing substantial individual-contributor work.

Coding. Building. Selling. Analyzing.

And, presumably, finding time to approve your vacation request.

The tradeoff is obvious: the more time managers spend doing the work, the less time they have to coach the people doing it.

If your career plan currently depends on your manager having lots of spare time to think deeply about your professional development...

We have some unfortunate news.

Open your calendar from last week.

Don't reorganize it.

Don't download another productivity app.

Just look at it.

Now find every recurring meeting you attended and ask one question:

If I stopped attending this for a month, what would actually happen?

Not what might happen.

What would actually happen?

If the answer is unclear, you have found a candidate.

Cancel it, shorten it, make it monthly, ask for notes instead or simply stop attending if you have that kind of organizational courage.

Saving 30 minutes from one recurring weekly meeting gives you roughly 26 hours a year.

One meeting.

Twenty-six hours.

There are people spending $19.99 a month on productivity apps trying to find those hours.

Your calendar may already have them.

That $88,387 number deserves another look.

Because it tells us something beyond salary.

People don't price a new job based only on what the work is worth.

They price the risk of leaving the job they already have.

And right now that risk feels expensive.

The labor market is slower. Hiring processes are longer. Economic uncertainty isn't exactly difficult to find.

So the number workers say they need to switch jobs has climbed even while actual wage growth has been much less dramatic.

There’s a useful personal exercise buried in that data.

What's your number?

Not your dream salary.

The number at which you would genuinely leave your current job tomorrow.

Take your current compensation and add everything you would be giving up:

bonus.

401(k) match.

health insurance.

vacation.

remote days.

commute.

flexibility.

equity.

The fact that your current boss already knows you're five minutes late to everything.

Then add the premium required to make the uncertainty worthwhile.

That number is much more useful than answering a recruiter with:

“I'm open to competitive offers.”

Know your number before someone else decides it for you.

Yeah… of course.

A $100,000 job with a five-day commute and a $100,000 remote job do not pay the same.

Not really.

Transportation, parking, lunches and clothing are the obvious costs.

Time is the bigger one.

A 45-minute commute each way, five days a week, adds up to roughly 390 hours a year.

That's more than sixteen entire 24-hour days.

Before accepting your next salary, calculate the commute too.

Your paycheck doesn't show it.

Your Tuesday morning does.

Technically Monday. Emotionally also Monday.

See you tomorrow.

Made for people with jobs. And meetings. So many meetings.

— The Still Monday Desk