
Remote software developers earn more than non-remote developers - ashitlerferad
https://whoisnnamdi.com/remote-software-developers-earn-more/
======
JackPoach
I think that it's cause and effect issue. Developers who've proven themselves
to be reliable and experienced can 'force' their preferences onto employers.
And they happen to cost more as well. I don't believe that going remote
magically makes you able command higher salary.

~~~
whoisnnamdi
Author here

Agreed, which is why I didn't say,"working remote causes developers to earn
22% more", only that developers who work remote earn 22% more, which is an
interesting fact in itself.

Early in the article I adjust this for various controls to better get at
causality. This includes observable factors like age, years of experience,
hours worked, size of employer, programming languages used, etc.

As I note in the article: >Much of the apparent premium earned by remote
developers is in fact driven by seniority and tenure. These are older, more
experienced developers who either prefer to work remote or whose organizations
grant them that privilege.

However, controlling for manually selected factors doesn't imply causality, so
I use principled covariate selection to select the best set of controls and
get closer to something that could be called causal. You can read more about
this method, called Double Lasso Selection, in Urminsky, Hansen, and
Chernozhukov [0].

This results in an adjusted pay premium of 9.4% for remote developers relative
to those that never work remote. Hard to know for sure if this is causal
either, but it's likely much closer to whatever the true causal impact is.
Unsurprisingly, it's a lower number.

Thanks for reading!

[0]
[http://home.uchicago.edu/ourminsky/Variable_Selection.pdf](http://home.uchicago.edu/ourminsky/Variable_Selection.pdf)

~~~
wbc
very cool! any thoughts on where that premium comes from, since we're
controlling for the standard stuff?

~~~
dx034
Pure speculation, but maybe you have to look around or negotiate to find
remote work? Those who tend to do that probably also get better salaries than
those that stick with one job for very long or don't compare much when looking
for jobs.

------
PragmaticPulp
Every time I've posted a remote job listing, I've been buried by a flood of
low-effort applications. Remote work has been a hot topic for a long time now.
To be blunt, there are a lot of people out there looking for cushy remote jobs
where they can fade into the background and do as little work as possible.
I've had a lot of negative experiences with digital nomads and "4 hour
workweek" followers. One person even tried to keep their old job and the new
remote position so they could get two paychecks (He couldn't keep up, didn't
last long).

Instead, our remote hiring has been via outbound recruiting only. The bar for
selecting these candidates is much higher, and we're also prepared to offer
higher compensation to secure those candidates.

Candidates who have a proven track record of delivering quality work in a
remote working positions are (or were) hard to come by. They definitely
command a premium in the market.

~~~
sytse
I have not seen it a clearly as you describe, but at GitLab we've seen a bit
of the same.

The digital nomads that move to a new room weekly tend to have a hard time
focussing on work. People that move every couple of months or that have a
camper tend to do better.

We've found amazing people inbound and most of our current team applied for
the job themselves. But there is a lot of noise and we had to decline more
than 99% of applicants. We've recently switched to sourcing (outbound
recruiting) focussed model [https://www.businessinsider.com/gitlab-hire-
critical-roles-r...](https://www.businessinsider.com/gitlab-hire-critical-
roles-recruiting-coronavirus-2020-4)

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> The digital nomads that move to a new room weekly tend to have a hard time
> focussing on work. People that move every couple of months or that have a
> camper tend to do better.

My experience has been similar.

Honestly, I don't care what people do in their off hours, where they live, or
how often they move around. The real problems come from mismatched priorities.
Many of the self-described digital nomads are looking to travel, socialize,
and essentially vacation all day while putting in just enough work to collect
a paycheck. This creates perverse incentives to sandbag, exaggerate effort,
pawn off work on coworkers, stretch deadlines, cut corners, and other
behaviors that bring the whole team down.

Digital nomads are easy to single out, but the same pattern can apply to
people who want remote jobs so they can focus on their side hustle, or who try
to be full-time caregivers for small children during the day. In theory, it
shouldn't matter if people can get their work done. In practice, it becomes a
game of minimizing their work. Ultimately, it's the rest of the team that
suffers, which is why I'm very careful to only hire people who can make the
job their top priority during working hours.

~~~
brailsafe
Meh, I feel like it's probably healthy to minimize work, not dishonestly, but
especially if the alternative is going into the office and not being
productive for those hours anyway.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> Meh, I feel like it's probably healthy to minimize work

That’s missing the point. I don’t expect people to do work for the sake of
doing work. We’re trying to get something done.

The problem comes when individuals on the team try to minimize their own
workload at any cost, which inevitably creates more work for other team
members. They either find ways to shift difficult tasks to other people on the
team, or they cut corners and saddle the team with technical debt.

I know the popular framing is to think of workers vs. big evil corporations,
but in reality most of these people end up hurting their coworkers far more
than the company by selfishly minimizing their own workloads.

> if the alternative is going into the office and not being productive for
> those hours anyway

In a properly functioning team, that should never happen. I can’t think of any
time in my professional career where our work backlog has literally gone to
zero. A properly managed roadmap and backlog means there should always be
something to work on.

I don’t expect employees to work extra hours to chip away at the backlog, but
if someone finishes their assigned tasks early then they need to step up and
help the team or work on the next tasks in the backlog.

If someone is constantly running out of work and finding themselves spending
unproductive hours at the office, their team is likely oversized in the first
place. Those people are either moved to another team or at the top of the list
when it’s time for layoffs, sadly.

~~~
brailsafe
I think it's only sometimes healthy to take on more stuff after you've
completed what you set out to that day. In my mind, the reward for
productivity should not be more work. Fuck that. At the office or not, most of
the time I'll try and get what I set out to do that day done, and then leave
unless there's something pressing. Mostly though, if there was something
pressing, then it would have been part of my goal for that day anyway.

You'd put someone on the chopping block for being too efficient? That doesn't
sound sensible.

------
mabbo
A friend of mine works/worked for <large company> in Seattle. He's a really
talented guy, probably on his way to Principle Engineer in the near future.
He's also pretty critical to some major work they're doing. I'm certain he's
paid well for it.

He told his boss he was moving to Montreal. Most other developers, if they
said that the boss would probably have said "well, it's been great working
with you". But my friend was a critical employee. Can't lose that guy.

Somehow, they found a way to let him be a remote developer from Montreal.
Still doing great work. Still being paid well, I imagine. And this is all pre-
pandemic.

Correlation does not imply causation. Being allowed to be a remote developer
and being paid well are _both_ signs that you might just be critical to your
organization.

~~~
whoisnnamdi
Author here

I think this is a quite common story, or at least I've heard it a few times
now so it feels that way:

(1) Senior, important developer decides they want to change locations.

(2) Boss can't afford to lose them.

(3) So boss let's them work from wherever they want.

This of course leads to natural correlation between working remote and skill,
which would further correlate to earnings.

Replacing a good software developers is non-trivial.

That said, to quote from the analysis: _Even once I control for various
observable factors (including age, experience, hours worked, size of employer,
programming languages, and more), fully-remote software developers earn 9.4%
more than developers who never or only rarely work remotely._

~~~
mabbo
I guess the problem is that the analysis can't find a variable for "is
critical". I know lots of people with age, experience, hours worked, etc, that
are not critical. I can think of a few that are exactly the opposite of
critical.

The only decent variable to measure whether someone is critical is their
salary. But your anlaysis makes it sound as though [remote -> high salary],
when really [high salary -> critical] and [remote -> critical].

~~~
lostcolony
I'd go so far as to say that critical and valuable are not necessarily the
same thing. I'd like to think I'm valuable; I go out of my way to not be
critical. Intentional knowledge shares, documentation, mentoring, etc, plus
focusing on writing systems that are fault tolerant, means that I could leave
and it -should- be a minor hiccup. Heck, almost an entire team left along with
me at one point in my career, and the projects we left behind just...kept
working, no issues. Doubt that company is actually looking to figure them out
so they can extend/support them should something need changing, but that's on
them.

------
eloff
If you work as a software engineer outside of a handful of cities, you earn
much less. E.g. a software engineer working in Tulsa makes a lot less than one
working in San Francisco. But if you work remote from Tulsa, you can work for
a company in one of the top cities and will make a higher salary, on average
than your local peers. I don't think remote workers in the valley make more
than their peers - maybe less.

I've worked remote my whole career, and the main reason I do that is I get a
substantially higher salary than my local peers because I don't live in the
USA.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
If anybody living in Tulsa can do this, the arbitrage opportunity will at some
point end and Tusla will get more expensive and SF less expensive.

~~~
eloff
Except that for whatever reason people don't do this so the advantage
continues to exist. Possibly because there aren't enough remote jobs?

~~~
ewi_
Also people may not want to live in Tulsa, even if they are better paid.

------
alexpetralia
Does the author control for geography?

Surely remote workers in Europe working for American employers will earn more
than their non-remote counterparts, but not the reverse.

(EDIT) I see the author in the original post subset only for US-based workers:
"The survey is global, but here I focus on 10,355 U.S. based individuals
employed as software engineers on either a part-time, full-time, or
independent basis"

~~~
whoisnnamdi
Author here

Yes the results include only the U.S. but do not include more granular
controls for regions within the U.S. So it's possible that this is biasing the
results.

That said, I do control for size of company, which often correlates strongly
with region (both big tech companies and startups tend to employ most of their
workforce from a certain region, i.e. west coast). I acknowledge this is
imperfect though

~~~
jt2190
Awesome analysis. Thanks for sharing this @whoisnnamdi

> 10,355 U.S. based individuals employed as software engineers on either a
> part-time, full-time, or independent basis

I'm unclear how you're controlling for employment-type pay differences, which
can be significant. Independent (1099) workers pay 100% of U.S Federal Income
Tax, whereas Employees pay 50%. (Same thing for extra costs, like health
insurance, retirement plans, etc.)

Edit: I suppose size of employer might be one way to do it.

~~~
whoisnnamdi
Thank you!

Yes this is an important point. I don't mention it there, but I do control for
full-time vs part-time vs. self-employed in my analysis.

I'll cover this in a coming post, but full-time and self-employed developers
make very similar amounts on average, with a slight benefit for full-time
employed.

I cannot control for the tax effects unfortunately, as I have no data on taxes
paid.

~~~
jt2190
> I cannot control for the tax effects unfortunately, as I have no data on
> taxes paid.

In that case I suggest separating the "Independent contractor, freelancer, or
self-employed" group from the , "Employed Full Time" and "Employed part-time"
groups. [1] The way that contractors are compensated is significantly
different from how employees are compensated.

[1] [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#work-_-
employ...](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#work-_-employment-
status)

------
efficax
I earn remarkably more as a remote developer than I would for my area because
I work remotely for a company based in a high income area (NYC) but live in
the midwest. I probably make 20-30% more, at least, than a Senior Engineer at
a local company would at the top of their payscale.

It has nothing to do with experience levels or anything like that, just
companies based in high income areas pay more. My salary is even scaled down a
bit based on regional cost of living (I'd likely earn 10% more if I relocated
to NYC, which would _not_ make up for the cost of living in new york)

------
sacks2k
I've been working remotely for almost a decade. I'm a senior developer and
make a very good living.

It's generally much more difficult for junior developers. At my last job, our
team comprised of all senior developers. We hired a few juniors and it was
very difficult due to roadblocks/communication. I think this is one reason
remote developers earn more: you need to be pretty independent and skilled for
it to work out well.

------
jmull
This is a more useful summary than the headline:

> once I control for various observable factors (including age, experience,
> hours worked, size of employer, programming languages, and more), fully-
> remote software developers earn __9.4% __more than developers who never or
> only rarely work remotely.

I wouldn't get too attached to any theories of causality or why, but as an
experienced remote worker, I'll speculate, FWIW:

* Generally (not always, just generally), employers tend to be hesitant and uncomfortable with remote workers. So the people that get and keep those arrangements tend to be those that have proven to be more trusted, capable, and indispensable. (Which all help with higher pay too, of course.)

This, BTW, describes my anecdotal experience at my company. Over the years
we've collected a decent sized group of people who work remotely, even though
the company doesn't generally allow it. The specifics of various cases have
been different, but generally something happens that would force the issue
(often an office move -- don't know why we need to do that so much), and some
people either need to leave the company or work remotely. In those cases,
accommodations were usually eventually made for people seen as indispensable
while others were let go (in one way or another). This is across various
management regimes. One time there was a hard-line stance, "move or be laid
off". There was a months long game of chicken, but in the end it was the
management that was replaced. (Not necessarily for that -- they made various
counter-productive decisions.)

* I think another reason for the higher pay may be that (IMO) you really do need to be a better communicator as a remote employee. I think most people working remotely become significantly better communicators, over time, and that translates to more senior positions and pay.

------
k__
When I see payment for devs here in Germany, it's no surprise.

I had the feeling, that US devs make about double of what German companies are
paying.

So now I make more money and add to the exports that everyone in Germany seems
to be so happy about :D

~~~
ChuckNorris89
I didn't understand your comment. Are you working for a German company or
remote for a US one?

~~~
k__
I'm from Germany working for US companies.

I'm "exporting" my work from Germany to the USA.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Thank for the clarification.

How do you find gigs/customers in the US?

I'm in nearby Austria and would like to do the same. The salaries here are a
joke.

~~~
k__
I blogged, wrote a book, put myself out there in the English speaking IT
community.

People started noticing.

But I have to admit, nowadays I only make money with writing about development
and not much production-software development anymore.

------
jillesvangurp
For some people it is a bit of a revelation that this can work, at all.
Because they are so used to the status quo of some dude in suit micromanaging
what they do in a waterfall like process that people insist is agile (usually
anything but). This is not the only way to develop software.

If you think about it, there are a lot of developers world wide, which makes
any perceived scarcity locally a non issue once you change your mind set and
stop insisting that they live within easy commute of wherever your office is.

Also, a lot of OSS software that we love and depend on every day defaults to
fully remote people organized in collectives that are vastly larger than most
corporate software teams producing software at a pace that these teams can
only dream off. Good software gets developed by an army of remote developers
and you probably use a lot of it every day and maybe even contribute to it
once in a while.

Another thing to consider is that lots of large corporations are so large that
most of their people might as well be remote even if they share the same
building (if they still fit in just one). Being in the same building doesn't
mean people talk to each other.

I used to work in Nokia when that was still a multinational making phones and
employing around 30K developers & engineers spread over multiple countries and
continents. Think lots of telcos, traveling and miscommunication.

------
mywittyname
Could this be selection bias?

Better developers have their choice of companies, and it makes sense that they
would prefer WFH over working in an office.

~~~
alexpetralia
The results are also selected from a StackOverflow survey. It is hard to tell
if SO survey respondents overrepresent higher-earning remote workers or not.

~~~
wainstead
Yup, this comment should be at the very top. The first problem with this
analysis of job salaries is it's based on a self-selected survey and not a
random sample.

------
chadash
Of course. Remote developers tend to be more senior. Once you control for
that, I'd be surprised if this still holds true, given that the FAANGs tend to
pay a high share of the highest salaries and they tend to not allow remote
work.

~~~
whoisnnamdi
Author here

Thanks, yes this is an important point which I cover later in the analysis:

 _" Even once I control for various observable factors (including age,
experience, hours worked, size of employer, programming languages, and more),
fully-remote software developers earn 9.4% more than developers who never or
only rarely work remotely."_

------
NovemberWhiskey
Has anyone taken a look at the underlying data set, specifically for the
compensation aspect?
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QOmVDpd8hcVYqqUXDXf68UMDWQZ...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QOmVDpd8hcVYqqUXDXf68UMDWQZP0wQV/view)

Each record has a currency, a "CompTotal" (number of units of pay currency), a
"CompFreq" (periodicity of pay; yearly/monthly/weekly) and a "ConvertedComp".

ConvertedComp is CompTotal multiplied by the number of CompFreq periods in a
year, converted to USD based on the specified currency and then clipped at the
98th percentile which seems to be $2M.

It seems ConvertedComp is what analysts are intended to use.

Of the United States-based, developer-by-profession responses who gave a
salary (~13,500), about 14% specified their CompFreq as something other than
annually. That subset has a mean ConvertedComp of >$1M.

On the other hand, there are a grand total of 17 responses for ConvertedComp
of >$1M for those who specified their CompFreq as annually.

Color me suspicious, but I suspect a large fraction of the responses in that
subset gave annual compensation rather compensation-per-period; undermining
the calculation of ConvertedComp quite considerably.

I don't know which fields the author actually used, but I have a lot of
questions about the usefulness of this data.

------
nostrademons
Much of this may be the effect of averaging a power law.

Whenever you remove barriers to entry (whether geographic, skill-based, or
social), you get regression to the mean: if workers are actually identical,
they should be paid the same. The mean of a power law distribution is always
higher than the media. Hence, if you remove geographic barriers to software
development work, the majority of software developers will see their salaries
increase. This comes at the expense of a few developers in high-paying areas
(Silicon Valley, SF, NYC), who will see their salaries dramatically decreased.
We already see this - as someone living in Silicon Valley, I can't take the
vast majority of remote jobs because they don't pay enough to live on here.

Someone's inevitably going to ask "If salaries are so unsustainably high in
Silicon Valley, why do companies keep hiring there and paying those
unsustainable salaries?"

And the answer to that is that _opportunities are not normally distributed_.
In today's consumer markets, consumers don't split their dollars evenly
between all firms providing a good, they tend to overwhelmingly go for the
best product available in that market, particularly if that product gets on
the market early. And that means going for a location where you have deep
talent pools in the many subspecialties needed to build that best product, and
putting them all in one cube farm so that communication costs between them are
at an absolute minimum. Silicon Valley's wage premium is a consequence of
growth and of consumer herd behavior: if everybody either thought entirely for
themselves or bought solely based on price without regards to features,
distributed teams would have an advantage.

It's a very similar phenomena as globalization. In the 80s all of America
enjoyed a large wage premium over all of the rest of the world. As
globalization broke down labor & trade barriers and innovation slowed, the
trend has been toward "equal pay for equal work", which means that the factory
worker in America will make something close to what the factory maker in China
makes. Global median wages rise (which they have done, substantially), but the
gains are at the cost of the majority of American wages, with the exception of
a few professions (tech, finance, some marketing) that have substantial skill-
based barriers to entry. Those professions have seen their wages increase
dramatically as markets get bigger.

~~~
sbacic
> We already see this - as someone living in Silicon Valley, I can't take the
> vast majority of remote jobs because they don't pay enough to live on here.

You also can't afford _not_ to take them since the high cost of living limits
how much you can save each month.

This is one of those things that isn't mentioned often - somebody with cheaper
costs of living can play hardball for months in search of a good gig. Somebody
in NYC or San Fran, not so much.

~~~
nostrademons
Not so much of an issue for me personally because I built up a bunch of
savings before COL became insane. Every time I've been on the job market, it
hasn't been an issue to wait several months for a better offer to come around.
You can rebuild savings awfully quickly when living costs $120K/year but your
job pays $500K/year.

I feel for newer developers that just moved out here with nothing to take
$120K/year jobs when living costs $120K/year, though.

------
bitwize
Yes, because you have to have a proven track record of being _damn good_ ,
hence too valuable to let go, in order to get the leverage to ask your boss to
work remotely full time.

Most of us coding schlubs will still be expected to show up at the office at 9
a.m. sharp. That won't change, barring something like coronavirus.

------
0x202020
The reason I started as a remote employee was that I could get a local
internship in college at $15/hr and have to live in the city or live at home
and drive further. On the other hand I applied for remote internships that I
could do from home and not have increased expenses while making $25/hr.

Ever since then I have occasionally interviewed for in person roles only to be
almost depressed by the offers received. You’re telling me you are offering a
Senior/Lead position ~72-80k without providing a laptop, paying healthcare
premiums and expecting them to commute 5 days a week? Sure maybe I’ve been had
above average positions/compensation but I’ve had better benefits as an
intern.

------
dep_b
In 2nd / 3rd world countries a developer earns a good salary when they're paid
(depending on the country) something like US$1500 per month. If you can charge
US$25 per hour remote freelance to US clients instead you're earning 2,5 times
as much and then you're still dirt cheap.

Also most employment is in NY or SF, people that work remotely for companies
in those cities usually don't say "oh just pay me less because I'm dialing in
from Nebraska" unless their CV's are weak.

Working remote means having access to the best paid jobs while the local
market is only interesting if you're living in a select group of cities.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Also most employment is in NY or SF

Is this true?

This article says over 4 million software developers in the US, and less than
a million in the _entire_ of California and New York state.

It says there's more employment in Texas than New York.

[https://www.daxx.com/blog/development-trends/number-
software...](https://www.daxx.com/blog/development-trends/number-software-
developers-world)

~~~
dx034
The fancy big tech or tech startup jobs might be concentrated in CA and NY,
overall jobs aren't. Nearly all companies have developers, so does every
region with large companies.

------
lucjac
have you considered the actual employment status? A lot of remote workers are
employed as freelancers and therefor need to take care of health care /
pension themselves with could increase their gross salary

------
lazyant
Makes sense to me, in my company we allow for senior developers to be remote
but not for junior ones, since they need more hand-holding, so there's a
correlation between experience and being remote.

~~~
globular-toast
Who holds their hands if the seniors are remote?

~~~
kradroy
You can certainly hold hands over Skype/zoom/Slack. I don't think there's a
physical proximity requirement for hand-holding.

~~~
globular-toast
Then why can't the juniors be remote?

------
conformist
It's nice that the article controls for many reasonable variables. Of course,
there could be other confounding factors (like the employer's trust, perhaps
location, etc.), but those may be hard to quantify.

I think, it's interesting to think about the reverse. "Developers that earn
more are more likely to work from home". I'm curious whether this still holds
for the very best payed and very worst payed? There could be other effects
kicking in the tails of the distribution?

------
RamiroP
I didn't see an important point that I think is relevant for fully-remote devs
and correct me if I'm wrong: On-site benefits. If you work remotely, you can't
use several of the benefits a company provides so a difference in the salary
is common as a compensation for those.

Same for healthcare plans and taxes. A lot of remote workers have to pay
those, which in many cases are completely or partially paid by the company, so
a bigger salary is needed.

~~~
cs02rm0
One of those on-site benefits is a desk.

With a phone, IT access, rental costs for the floorspace, heating, electricity
and all the other associated costs that a company can save on by hiring
someone remote.

------
alextheparrot
Would be interested if there is a company bias being seen here — a lot of the
larger tech companies both pay more and, from my experience, are more flexible
with working arrangements than traditional big companies.

My intuition is especially piqued by the fact that the author says the initial
foray into remote work is where most of the effect is seen. Most of my peers
and my experience is that working remotely once a week or so is not at all
uncommon.

------
627467
I had that perception from friends who work remotely, yet, it seems counter
intuitive... I would think that if a company is open to fill a position with
someone remote than the supply-side is much bigger lowering the bargaining
power of someone filling that position.

Plus as others have mentioned, remote-position is seen as a perk so I expected
it to put more downward pressure on salary

------
sbacic
And that's before taking into account the huge amount of money you save with
lower taxes and living costs.

I've occasionally entertained the idea of moving to a big city like London or
New York for work. Every time I did the math I realized how little sense it
makes. And I don't live in southern Europe, not some third-world country.

------
ajuc
It's probably not a factor in US, but in many cheaper countries working
remotely means working for clients from richer countries which save a lot on
hiring from cheaper countries.

So you can split the difference between the pay in your country and in their
country and both sides are happy (and developers earn more).

------
sq1020
Has anyone else noticed that jobs that are advertised as remote on sites like
weworkremotely pay substantially less than regular on-site jobs?

Whereas if you start a position on-site, do well, gain the trust of the
employer and then go remote, then I can believe the argument of the article.

~~~
dx034
I guess that depends what your base line is. While SV is over-represented
here, it's only a tiny fraction of the global developer market. The salary of
many remote jobs could exceed local levels for the vast majority while being
significantly below SV levels.

------
chadlavi
I didn't see where this might be controlled for, but presumably someone who's
a contractor gets paid more because they're dealing with their own benefits,
and it's much more common for contractors to work remotely than in-office
somewhere.

------
archeantus
I was lucky enough to get a great remote job that was happy to pay me as if I
lived and worked in SF, but let me live anywhere I wanted to in the country.

Remote devs that have this arrangement definitely take home more money than
their peers who live in more expensive zip codes.

------
jugg1es
There is not one mention of full-time versus contract work. If he didn't
control for that, this entire post is totally useless. Contractors charge a
premium because they don't get other benefits, like healthcare.

------
dhd415
Though I would love for this to be causal, this analysis needs to control for
the experience level of the developer. IME, developers who work remotely tend
to be more on the experienced end of the spectrum.

~~~
OJFord
> Even once I control for various observable factors (including age,
> experience, hours worked, size of employer, programming languages, and more)

(Note 'experience')

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boring_twenties
I would love to be able to confirm this. Unfortunately since moving away from
NYC and starting to work remotely I can't even get 1/3 of the salaries they're
offering back there.

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diehunde
I wonder if after COVID-19 more companies will realize having remote people is
viable and be open to offer more remote positions (I'm looking at you FAANG,
unicorns, etc.)

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deedubaya
I doubt it. Distributed work forces being successful is more of a top-down way
of management than anything.

Also, COVID-19 remote work is not normal remote work. Lots of other stressors
and distractions. So the taste might not be a good one.

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lmeyerov
Title should be changed from 'remote'. Someone who spends two days a month wfh
is not remote, yet that's what they count.

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tomaszs
With different agreement. Less perks and probably you need to pay for some
stuff on your own. To sum it up sometimes they earn less

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clircle
Employees at my company get paid 20% more, but don't have benefits. Works out
about the same.

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coliveira
Practically all entry level developers are non-remote workers. This makes a
lot of difference.

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nobody0
Because there are much more senior positions than junior ones in remote space.

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LatteLazy
No, well paid developers are more likely to allowed to work remotely.

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codelord
No causation without intervention.

