Commuting to work is passé and employers are embracing the brave new world of remote work:
Remote work became a necessity during the pandemic, but it has since reshaped how American workers do their jobs. While working from home is a relatively new experience for the majority of people, most have taken to it like a duck to water, and are refusing to go back to their cubicles. As it turns out, they've got good reasons to want to continue working from home.
The "2023 State of Software Engineers Report" by job search portal Hired has revealed many interesting facts about software engineers in Silicon Valley and beyond. One telling result from the survey is the overwhelming preference for remote work, with as many as 39% of respondents saying they would prefer remote work over in-office work any day.
According to the report, salaries are almost identical for both remote and local work. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, where salaries are the highest, software engineers working remotely made $176,000 last year, while those working locally made $180,000. In some smaller markets, remote roles even commanded higher salaries than in-office work.
When asked what they would do if mandated to return to the office, 21% of respondents said they would quit, while 49% said that they will look for other remote work opportunities while continuing to work at their current company. Employers apparently already have an inkling of their employees' preferences, as many of them are offering 'flexible work schedules' as one of the top benefits alongside healthcare and paid time off.
[...] Looking forward to 2023, 57% of surveyed engineers said they believe AI, machine learning and data science will be the hottest sector, followed by fintech and healthtech. Almost 2 out 3 (64%) surveyed engineering candidates also expected Python to be the top programming language to master in 2023.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Saturday March 04, @10:51PM (5 children)
Healthcare and paid time off should be rights, not benefits, in any civilized society.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04, @11:19PM (3 children)
I demand free lunch and Foosball tables. Also a pension, give me a pension for when I get too old and they don't want to hire me anymore.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @01:33AM (2 children)
No kidding. Can you imagine a company actually wanting to invest in their people like they used to do back when we had a strong economy and middle class? History has shown everything is much better with disposable employees and money going to the incompetents at the top, aka the "captains of industry."
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @07:01PM (1 child)
"Captain" doesn't seem like a high enough honorific. How does Executive Director sound? Chief Executive? Bold Leader? Lord of the Rings? Protectorate of the State? Grand Emperor? The One? Benighted & Hideous Divinity of the Aborted Cryptopsy?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 06, @05:45PM
Definitely not "The One", because if you become not "The One", you're either going to end up in the bad place or the good place. Then again, maybe we'll get highlander style fights to the death between CEOs, "There can be, Only One!"
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @07:13PM
It's actually insidious that corporations are being allowed to take over these functions of the State. We The People decide how to treat We The People because we are the State. Tying humanity to predatory ideologies was a mistake - is a mistake. The 20th Century played out the Ideology Wars and the winner is still just an ideology. The end stage of all ideologies is the same.
(Score: 4, Informative) by stormreaver on Sunday March 05, @01:10AM (2 children)
I wouldn't care if I never stepped foot back into an office building. The pandemic has been the best thing to ever happen to my working life. If it took another one to stop the stupid talk of returning to the office, I would cast a 'yes' vote for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @01:24AM (1 child)
> I wouldn't care if I never stepped foot back into an office building.
Welcome to the club! I've been working from home since I got my undergrad degree in 1978. Of course a few times I've worked onsite at customer office buildings, but never as a regular job. While I probably missed out on some opportunities by not having all the networking opportunities that come from corporate life, it's been a great ride doing things on my own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @07:16PM
> it's been a great ride doing things on my own.
The truth is that even in an office, you do things on your own. But usually with managers sitting on your shoulder yelling at you and demanding better performance.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday March 05, @04:05AM (5 children)
As a remote employee, I can work for any company anywhere where their working time zone is when I'm willing to be awake and working. As an in-person employee, I can only work for companies within a reasonable commuting distance, or have to relocate and deal with all the cost and hassle and change in social life that goes along with that.
This makes a big difference when you are (as I am) in a local market where it's pretty rare for programmers to get more than around $120K as best as I can tell, whereas in the remote market you can work for companies that are used to paying the Silicon Valley going which is roughly double that. For those working from other countries, the benefits can be even greater.
Proponents of the concept of "free trade" often will talk about the "free movement of labor and capital", with the idea that the labor and capital will move to places where it is most useful. However, in practice, capital has been able to move much more easily than labor: I can move my capital with a few clicks on my brokerage's website, whereas to move my labor historically involved packing up everything I owned, spending a bunch of time and money moving it to the new location, and unpacking, and being out security deposits and the like, sorting out visas if you're working in another country, etc etc. Widespread remote work makes that kind of labor a lot easier to move around.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday March 05, @03:35PM (3 children)
>whereas in the remote market you can work for companies that are used to paying the Silicon Valley going
If you can get them to give you the time of day. In the "Naughty Aughties (aka 2000s)" I found that a Masters' Degree issued in 1990 was "too old" for any callbacks from any Silicon Valley want-ad applications.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday March 05, @06:51PM (2 children)
I'm in my early 40's, and while I've definitely encountered a bit of age discrimination over recent years I was pleasantly surprised at who would give me the time of day. You're better off applying for megacorps than smaller startups though, because they're big enough that demographic discrimination is more likely to lead to either new regulations or lawsuits.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday March 05, @07:12PM (1 child)
My experience has been the opposite. I started in a startup, that ran for 12 years, then I did a mid career 2 years per company (more or less) all small to tiny companies, for another 12ish years.
Last stop, I hope, was acquisition of myself along with my last company by a megacorp, 9 years and running so far so good.
I applied to this very office three or four times through the years, never a single callback. The only way in here for me was to get bought along with a $100M acquisition. Similar experience of no callbacks from basically every megacorp I ever applied to.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @07:20PM
tHey'Re So sMaRt
Executives gotta execute. Buying companies is just corporate churn - negotiating on the golf course, staying in penthouse suites, eating steak in top restaurants - flipping coins. You just gotta go to the right school and have the right parents and this is your birthright.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @03:00AM
There are still regulations in many countries discouraging the hiring of remote workers from other countries. But that's probably a good thing for the citizens in the hiring countries - many of them would find it harder or even impossible to compete.
The USA has Central America and South America in its timezone hitzones, not as bad for US people compared to Australia having South East Asia and East Asia within reach of its timezones.
Those at the top (whether in hierarchy or skills) probably don't have to fear but there are plenty of mediocre or worse workers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Sunday March 05, @01:09PM (1 child)
I hate working in an office. They are invariably noisy, uncomfortable places. They're either too hot or too cold. Sometimes there's a smelly person nearby. Sometimes there are people who never stop talking (and proudly announce to the office that they'll have to come in at the weekend to get their work done).
You are not in control of things like the temperature. Sometimes the ventilation is so poor that it just recirculates the same air all day and the oxygen level drops, leading to drowsiness and headaches. I measured this once when I was working at a nuclear power station. The biggest safety risk on site was from carbon dioxide leaks. When we practised emergency exercises we were given portable CO2 monitors. I used to hate the debriefs. Some idiots would use it as an opportunity to waffle literally for hours so that they didn't have to go back to work. I left the monitor on in the meeting and watched the CO2 content of the air get up to unhealthy levels with my developing headache.
Then there's the lighting. Are there flickery lights? Are they too bright? Are your eyes in direct sunlight? It drives me mad.
Next is the office network which is almost always administered by clueless Windows people and it's often slow, intermittent or plain broken. My father ran a network in a large company in the 1980s. It was 10Mbit Ethernet with Netware servers. It never went down once. Never. The company never lost a minute's productivity because of that network.
I hate offices, I hate the stupidity that goes with them. I have things to get done. I get them done faster and to a higher standard in my quiet and comfortable home office. It's the right temperature, the air is fresh, I can pull the blinds down when the Sun comes round and there are no idiots gibbering and waffling over my thoughts. And no smelly people exposing their armpits in front of ventilation.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday March 05, @03:58PM
>They are invariably noisy, uncomfortable places.
Oh, you haven't been in the "right" offices, then. About half the offices I have worked in over the past 30 years were as quiet or quieter than any other working environment - other than my sailboat in the marina: that place is amazingly devoid of distractions.
As for comfort, that's telling: most offices I have worked for go out of their way to splurge on high quality chairs, impeccable air conditioning, lighting to-taste. There certainly have been exceptions, but many of my "office" workspaces have been well appointed in the creature comfort areas.
>You are not in control of things like the temperature.
It does get too cold in places at times... Never had any pushback for a personal space heater, even if "the rules" forbade them. One place did enforce the "no space heaters" rule, but they also had functional thermostats.
>Sometimes the ventilation is so poor that it just recirculates the same air all day and the oxygen level drops
Now, I will admit, my very first job shared a building with a printing press which ran about 2 days a year. On those days, the fumes from the printer were absolutely intolerable. I left my desk, work stoppage. No complaints from my employer, apologies and understanding instead - though a couple of co-workers toughed it out and tried to throw some guilt-shade my way, zero impact from that.
Again, no other location has the fresh air and breeze of the marina, but... that's asking an awful lot.
>when I was working at a nuclear power station.
Now, I must admit, the first two jobs I was offered were in the nuclear industry, I declined.
>Then there's the lighting. Are there flickery lights? Are they too bright? Are your eyes in direct sunlight? It drives me mad.
Don't get mad, take control. My latest expression of control was when they opaque filmed my office window, at first facilities said they would remove it for me, then they said "nope, that's not gonna happen." some BS about climate control, but the blinds on the window offered plenty of climate control, I believe it was more of a pay-grade thing: views of the trees are supposed to be a perk for the level above where I was working at the time... So, one Friday evening starting around 5:30pm, I took a razor blade to the film and 100% removed it and cleaned the glass like the film was never there. That was 8 years ago now, and the glass on that window is still clear.
Don't like your fluorescent tubes? Turn 'em off, unscrew them if there's no good switch for the ones that bother you, bring in incandescent / halogen lamps (stay away from the 300W fire hazards), again: I have had zero pushback over the years for this... my latest office came pre-equipped with personal incandescent lamps left by the previous occupant when he resigned.
>Next is the office network which is almost always administered by clueless Windows people and it's often slow,
True enough, and relatable. In my last office I installed an 8 port switch, a couple of NUC servers running Ubuntu for various things I (and our department) needed, and launched an (ineffective) campaign to get our office network internet connection upgraded to at least home network performance levels. A 1GB download takes maybe 5 minutes at home, the same download might take upwards of 30 minutes at work. Yet another reason to have a home office and not go in to work much.
>I hate the stupidity that goes with them.
There is a tremendous amount of time in the office that seems to go to "bonding" / "networking" etc. instead of direct productivity. However, a certain amount of that bonding and networking has been tremendouslty valuable to me over the years, and ultimately led to me being where I have been for the past 10 years in a stable good paying job with "competitive" (read: used to be better, still sucks slightly less than what's available elsewhere) benefits.
>there are no idiots gibbering ... And no smelly people exposing their armpits in front of ventilation.
I guess you don't have children at home
>no idiots ... waffling over my thoughts.
I don't know how you escape that, for me that has been a constant through companies big and small, regardless of where my desk is.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Interesting) by srobert on Sunday March 05, @03:49PM (1 child)
The company I work for has established a hybrid schedule where we work from home half the week. But I want my employer to know that in order to work effectively we need to be in the office together on occasion. Well at least I want my employer to believe that. I'm afraid that if they found out that all of our work could be done remotely then they would start hiring people in the 3rd world to do it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07, @09:46AM
I'm one of those 3rd world country workers and even I will try to convince my bosses that not all my work can be done remotely. For example, I just physically installed some network hardware today. Not so easy to outsource that to a cheaper worker in a different country.
At other times I do "cloud" stuff which definitely can 100% be done at home.