
The Shifting State of Remote Work - emiliowav
https://www.yac.chat/blog/the-shifting-state-of-remote-work
======
bradlys
> One explanation is that Buffer’s sample population may have changed over the
> years. However, Buffer sampled well over 1,000 employees in each annual
> report and doesn’t provide any indication that their sampling technique
> meaningfully deviated from past years.

Sampling technique might not have differed or it might have. I did some deeper
diving on the stats because I have a hard time believing remote shot up
drastically like it makes it seem and that it suddenly pays great...

2018: [https://open.buffer.com/state-remote-
work-2018/](https://open.buffer.com/state-remote-work-2018/)

2020: [https://lp.buffer.com/state-of-remote-
work-2020](https://lp.buffer.com/state-of-remote-work-2020)

Compare 2018

> Most of the folks we surveyed work in the software industry (26%) followed
> by IT and Services (20%) and Marketing (19%). Only 5% of respondents work in
> Education and 8% in Media and Publishing.

To 2020

> Forty-one percent of those who took the survey work at organizations in
> software space. Other industries include: IT and Services (19.5 percent);
> Marketing (8.7 percent); Other (7.3 percent); Financial Services (4.6
> percent); Media and Publishing (3.6 percent); Education (3.3 percent);
> E-commerce (3 percent); Medical and Healthcare (3 percent); Consumer
> products (2.3 percent); Travel and Tourism (1.6 percent); Non-profit (1.5
> percent); Government (0.6 percent); and Law and Legal Services (0.6
> percent).

Do we think that software suddenly had a 50-100% rise in engineers working
remotely in 2 years? Maybe - but, personally, I'm skeptical. Seems more likely
that the way they sampled their population changed.

And it's almost like the increase in software engineers reporting directly
correlated with a rise in wages. Go figure...

~~~
ghaff
I would be interested to see how they qualify respondents with respect to
"remote." If it was in the report, I missed it. Presumably there has to be
some floor higher than "I travel a quarter of the time" or I work from home
Fridays.

I do see something of an increase in the number of tech people who can
reasonably be described as working remotely but that does seem a big change in
a couple of years. (Though it's not just software engineers but senior people
in tech generally.)

~~~
hrktb
Even “I work from home Fridays” would be a relevant bar I think.

It wouldn’t be allowed, or technically unfit (no access to critical tools) in
a lot of companies I’ve seen 10 or even 5 years ago. Someone “working from
home” would be considered traveling and lose most of the work resources.

~~~
ghaff
Fair enough. For many of us in professional tech jobs today, it's easy to
forget just how normed working from home now and then has become. In my first
longtime job in the computer industry, I would travel some but the expectation
was absolutely that I'd be in the office if I weren't even if the weather was
crappy, etc. For one thing, if I weren't in the office, I was pretty cut off
from routine communications like phone calls, network access, and so forth.

I'm not sure I'd consider one day a week working "remote" but it does point to
an expectation of a lot of flexibility for many professional jobs even if
they're not technically remote-first.

------
Ididntdothis
I think remote work is best suited for pretty senior people who don’t need
much coaching. So that may shift salaries up a little.

A while ago there was a small discussion in another thread about onboarding
remote junior and I got the impression that nobody really knows how to do that
well.

~~~
Thorentis
Yep, this. You don't hire interns, grads, and juniors for remote work. So
automatically the average salary is higher for remote work when you limit it
to mid level and above.

~~~
thinkharderdev
Right, and in my experience at least a lot of remote workers are not people
who are hired for a remote job but a senior(ish) person who negotiated with
their employer to transition to being full-time remote, even if the company
doesn't explicitly allow or support remote work.

~~~
ghaff
Right. I work with a lot of people (and am one myself) who were hired into an
office but are reasonably described as remote, whether or not 100%, now.

------
kukabynd
It’s not surprising given that those who are able to dictate their desired
setup (remote work in this case) can command higher salaries. Would be nice to
see the graph of years of experience + salaries for remote vs onsite workers.

~~~
dkdk8283
At my employer we have zones and your salary is adjusted based on COL compared
to say SF.

I’m doing well as a remote worker, but I’ve been browsing job boards and many
advertised ranges are about half of what I’m currently earning. It needs to
get better.

~~~
foogazi
> At my employer we have zones and your salary is adjusted based on COL
> compared to say SF.

Would be an example of someone not dictating their setup

~~~
xur17
Agreed. Any remote company that adjusts salaries based on location gets a hard
pass from me.

~~~
mox1
I think its perfectly reasonable to do this. As someone who would love to be a
remote worker as long as my total comp package is acceptable to me, I don't
really give a crap if they are paying someone in SF 25% more.

I would more look at compared to local jobs in my area.

For example, my job, my years of experience, in my area (Midwest USA) is
roughly $175K on a W2 salary. If that same position is 275k in NYC, but I'm
offered it at $175k, sign me up!

I'm sure they would pay me the $275k if I moved to New York...but not living
in New York is worth $100k a year to me.

~~~
xur17
While true, you're going to miss out on some percentage of applicants that are
willing to interview a bit more to get a non-adjusted rate. This might be fine
if you have a good hiring funnel, but if you're a scrappy startup, this could
be challenging.

Also, you will likely end up with a slightly higher churn rate (since smart
employees will continue interviewing to see if they can get a higher salary
from a place that doesn't adjust based on cost of living).

It's a perfectly reasonable approach to take as an employer, and if you can
make it work, all the more power to you.

------
k__
I work remote so I have more free time.

No commute, can work from many places, can do chores between work, etc.

~~~
dx87
Same. I was offered a promotion at my current job, but it would require being
on site at different locations. I turned it down because I get paid well
enough to work from home, plus I get an extra 2-3 hours of free time every day
since I don't have to get dressed or deal with traffic.

~~~
k__
I "lost" a few promotions because working remote too.

Still worth it.

------
ghaff
The change isn't especially surprising. Given that the survey allows for even
<50% remote work to be factored in, I expect that there's been an increase in
the number of better compensated/more senior people who work remotely as
opposed to being primarily contractors, support staff, etc. The article
speculates about this but it seems pretty obvious among a lot of people I work
with and know.

~~~
HunterYAC
Anecdote - Talked to a highly paid contractor from Nasa the other day. He said
he's been working in-office 30+ years and just this month was allowed to work
full-time remote.

Renaissance of remote work approaching imo.

------
ryanyde
Agree with @bradlys' comment: This just suggests more highly paid people are
being allowed to work remote, vs. remote jobs being paid more.

Given the expansion of high paying roles across geographies, this could be
driven almost entirely by FAANG opening engineering / R&D centers in other
cities like Denver / Dallas, etc.

Also 'remote' could be laxer standards for these same companies on going down
to Mountain View / Menlo Park driven by commute and traffic. Many of my
friends commute 2x a week, passing the 50% threshold for remote work, even
though I wouldn't consider Menlo Park / Mountain View to SF 'Remote'

~~~
ghaff
To be honest, of course. If remote work is paying substantially better it's
because higher paid people have jobs that fit under some technical definition
of remote.

To your example, I don't work in the Bay Area but I'm theoretically in an
office about a 30 minute drive away. However, I gave up my desk and only go in
for meetings sometime. I'd definitely self-report as Remote even though I
technically aren't.

I wonder if some of it is just changes in attitudes. Lots of people in tech
and elsewhere (e.g. sales) have long spent very little time in their offices
even if they had one. I wonder if they consider themselves Remote today when
they wouldn't have in the past because they were technically in an office.

------
quaffapint
I've been looking on and off for a few months to see what the remote market is
like. It's rare to find senior dev jobs paying >130k and even rarer to find
local jobs that let you be remote a fixed number of days a week. It seems at
least around here you would need to take a good pay cut to have a remote
option.

~~~
randomdude402
Anecdotal, but myself and two other people I know at two other places work
"mostly remote," meaning commute once a week or less.

In each case, we started by commuting full time, and added remote days after
some months. Also for all of us, we have a good number of co-workers that go
into the office most days.

I found the same as you, in that looking for positions specifically billed as
remote positions, the money is really not there.

~~~
HunterYAC
The good news is that remote jobs are growing by the day. Remote.co is doing a
good job at snagging high quality jobs [https://remote.co/remote-
jobs/developer/](https://remote.co/remote-jobs/developer/)

------
rossdavidh
It occurs to me that, in at least some cases, employers don't want to have
remote workers (fear of loss of control), but will accept it if they cannot
fill the position otherwise (e.g. there are no available programmers in our
town).

So, it will be interesting to see what happens when the next labor market
downturn comes.

~~~
itsthisjustin
Remote work is all about trust. Find good talent that you don't have to micro
manage and you'll see that the output is 2x what the input used to be. It's
amazing how much you can get done when you're left alone and not interrupted
by meetings and a distracting workplace

~~~
HunterYAC
True story
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/abdullahimuhammed/2019/05/21/he...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/abdullahimuhammed/2019/05/21/heres-
why-remote-workers-are-more-productive-than-in-house-teams/)

------
JMTQp8lwXL
I would love if sites like levels.fyi had a checkbox for remote work. Since
there's few stats out there: $150k base, $50k stock ($200k / 4 years), no
bonus. Focus on front end, 5 YOE.

~~~
tiborsaas
Haha, I'd love to have this as well, sign me up for a job like this :)

