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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 t

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.

ikeyany 6y ago
Yes, but if the headline said "Experienced developers tend to have more freedom, like the ability to work remotely", we wouldn't click on this thread and talk about it.
- CodeSheikh 6y ago
  I agree with you. Title is misleading.
whoisnnamdi 6y ago
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 6y ago
  very cool! any thoughts on where that premium comes from, since we're controlling for the standard stuff?
  - dx034 6y ago
    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.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - thinkharderdev 6y ago
    One possibility is that remote developers are just more productive (or if you prefer, more productive developers are more able to negotiate a remote working allowance from their employer). In standard economic theory, the equilibrium wage is at the workers marginal revenue product (or the marginal revenue that their work produces for the organization). So you would expect remote workers to either earn more because they are more productive or, if remote work makes you more productive, to earn more as a result of working remotely and being more productive
- whack 6y ago
  > 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. There are likely many other factors which aren't "observable" by your methodology, which are causing the 9.4% pay-premium. Factors like competency, domain knowledge, and how essential they are to the organization. I find it much more believable that these unobservable factors are causing both the pay-premium, and working-remote flexibility. This is a common problem that comes up in such studies. Adjusting for various observable factors is great, but it still leaves behind the other unobservable factors. At which point you have to use your judgement to figure out whether those unobservable factors are more compelling than the hypothesis being tested. That said, this is still a very cool analysis that demonstrates an interesting correlation. Thanks for sharing!
duxup 6y ago
Even as a noob it plays out that way, I've only been coding for a couple years. First I was in the office all the time, then I started working from home maybe one day a week.... After everyone got comfortable with me and I proved I could produce my pay increased dramatically, and at the same time work from home turned into 3-5 days a week. Trust, pay, and working from home and / or remote all are generally related I think.
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
You may be onto something. Before Covid managers at my place considered remote work a reward for good behavior and delivering results. Needless to say, those people also tended to get better reviews and salaries.
jdxcode 6y ago
I don't even think it's that complicated. Organizations that offer remote usually won't do it for interns and junior engineers and it probably isn't great for those engineers anyways. If you just took out all these engineers I wouldn't be surprised if the average jumps by 22%.
- atmosx 6y ago
  Yes. Most remote positions, clearly state the "prior remote work experience" is greatly appreciated or even required. Remote usually means more not less work, so there's that too.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zbobet2012 6y ago
As a manager and software engineer, Seniority is also implicitly more about _independence_ than _capability_. This is something Junior engineers are often confused about. Its easier to hire, or let a senior work at home, because generally, they have a much stronger track record of "not becoming blocked" and "not needing someone to prioritize tasks" etc. In short, its less about "forcing" preferences, and more about managements have seen this person execute with less oversite. Which is almost definitionally seniority. A lot of you will respond to this "I don't need oversite to get things done" and a lot of you will be wrong. Because a lot of engineers need oversite to get _the right things_ done.
- bg4 6y ago
  Independence, proficiency, and good judgement.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tasuki 6y ago
  Generally agreed, just wanted to point out that "oversite" is "a layer of concrete used to seal the earth under the ground floor of a house", while "oversight" is "the action of overseeing something". So yes, a lot of civil engineers need oversite to get the right things done :)
- kradroy 6y ago
  Independence and reliability are both driving factors for me as a manager. I have a junior dev with 2 years experience and he had to move due to family situation. He asked for permission earlier this year, and I didn't hesitate in saying yes. There are some "almost senior" devs on the team I would have told to walk, if they had made the same request.
johnlbevan2 6y ago
Another factor may be subjective vs absolute data points in the source. "Do you work from home more than 50% of your working hours?" has a simple yes/no answer. "What is your salary, including average annual bonus, after tax?" has a single numeric answer. "How many years have you been a developer?" sounds simple; but has interpretation issues. Do I count from my first line of code when playing as a kid, my first computer science class, my first paying job as a developer, or some other time? If this is a measure of seniority (e.g. we define senior as anyone who's been coding for 10+ years) there will be a mixed bag. This may mean that despite trying to factor out variables they're hiding in the noise of bad data; so may still have a hand in the result. i.e. Those developers who've counted 9 years developing from their first salaried job and now earn more and work from home are in the same group as those who've just graduated but counted their time coding from their 8-year-old-self's first foray who are in their first year of the job, and thus on lower salary and less perks.
yibg 6y ago
Don’t we also expect to see this result just by the fact the remote employees working for say Bay Area companies get closer to Bay Area comp then low cost of living level comp? On average then you’ll get a higher average salary for remote employees because non remote employees includes a large number of people outside of Seattle, Bay Area, New York etc.
baybal2 6y ago
I also see that as a much simpler explanation, you don't hire unproven people on remote. A higher portion of remotes are temps, and/or having to incorporate in their countries, and carry the burden of doing paperwork.
FpUser 6y ago
Myself being remote and developing mostly products from scratch I completely agree with your conclusion based on my own experience.
k__ 6y ago
Multiple reasons. Choosing the best offer world wide may end up in better pay that choosing the best offer in town.
netcan 6y ago
...and other nonlinear cause-effect things. Working from home is a "benefit," and it can be demanded by developers with more leverage. They can also demand more money.
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
Or what about location? I know a lot of remote workers who go live in countries that are much cheaper where they couldn't find a job that would pay like this.
zerr 6y ago
It lets me escape the local (underpaid) market. That's why I won't work for Gitlab, Mozilla or similar company which pays based on the location, not contribution.
ahallock 6y ago
Exactly. Working remotely by itself doesn't lead to higher pay; it's only a perk of an employee with leverage.

ikeyany 6y ago

Yes, but if the headline said "Experienced developers tend to have more freedom, like the ability to work remotely", we wouldn't click on this thread and talk about it.

CodeSheikh 6y ago
I agree with you. Title is misleading.

whoisnnamdi 6y ago

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 6y ago
very cool! any thoughts on where that premium comes from, since we're controlling for the standard stuff?
- dx034 6y ago
  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.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- thinkharderdev 6y ago
  One possibility is that remote developers are just more productive (or if you prefer, more productive developers are more able to negotiate a remote working allowance from their employer). In standard economic theory, the equilibrium wage is at the workers marginal revenue product (or the marginal revenue that their work produces for the organization). So you would expect remote workers to either earn more because they are more productive or, if remote work makes you more productive, to earn more as a result of working remotely and being more productive
whack 6y ago
> 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. There are likely many other factors which aren't "observable" by your methodology, which are causing the 9.4% pay-premium. Factors like competency, domain knowledge, and how essential they are to the organization. I find it much more believable that these unobservable factors are causing both the pay-premium, and working-remote flexibility. This is a common problem that comes up in such studies. Adjusting for various observable factors is great, but it still leaves behind the other unobservable factors. At which point you have to use your judgement to figure out whether those unobservable factors are more compelling than the hypothesis being tested. That said, this is still a very cool analysis that demonstrates an interesting correlation. Thanks for sharing!

duxup 6y ago

Even as a noob it plays out that way, I've only been coding for a couple years. First I was in the office all the time, then I started working from home maybe one day a week.... After everyone got comfortable with me and I proved I could produce my pay increased dramatically, and at the same time work from home turned into 3-5 days a week. Trust, pay, and working from home and / or remote all are generally related I think.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

You may be onto something. Before Covid managers at my place considered remote work a reward for good behavior and delivering results. Needless to say, those people also tended to get better reviews and salaries.

jdxcode 6y ago

I don't even think it's that complicated. Organizations that offer remote usually won't do it for interns and junior engineers and it probably isn't great for those engineers anyways. If you just took out all these engineers I wouldn't be surprised if the average jumps by 22%.

atmosx 6y ago
Yes. Most remote positions, clearly state the "prior remote work experience" is greatly appreciated or even required. Remote usually means more not less work, so there's that too.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zbobet2012 6y ago

As a manager and software engineer, Seniority is also implicitly more about _independence_ than _capability_. This is something Junior engineers are often confused about. Its easier to hire, or let a senior work at home, because generally, they have a much stronger track record of "not becoming blocked" and "not needing someone to prioritize tasks" etc. In short, its less about "forcing" preferences, and more about managements have seen this person execute with less oversite. Which is almost definitionally seniority. A lot of you will respond to this "I don't need oversite to get things done" and a lot of you will be wrong. Because a lot of engineers need oversite to get _the right things_ done.

bg4 6y ago
Independence, proficiency, and good judgement.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tasuki 6y ago
Generally agreed, just wanted to point out that "oversite" is "a layer of concrete used to seal the earth under the ground floor of a house", while "oversight" is "the action of overseeing something". So yes, a lot of civil engineers need oversite to get the right things done :)
kradroy 6y ago
Independence and reliability are both driving factors for me as a manager. I have a junior dev with 2 years experience and he had to move due to family situation. He asked for permission earlier this year, and I didn't hesitate in saying yes. There are some "almost senior" devs on the team I would have told to walk, if they had made the same request.

johnlbevan2 6y ago

Another factor may be subjective vs absolute data points in the source. "Do you work from home more than 50% of your working hours?" has a simple yes/no answer. "What is your salary, including average annual bonus, after tax?" has a single numeric answer. "How many years have you been a developer?" sounds simple; but has interpretation issues. Do I count from my first line of code when playing as a kid, my first computer science class, my first paying job as a developer, or some other time? If this is a measure of seniority (e.g. we define senior as anyone who's been coding for 10+ years) there will be a mixed bag. This may mean that despite trying to factor out variables they're hiding in the noise of bad data; so may still have a hand in the result. i.e. Those developers who've counted 9 years developing from their first salaried job and now earn more and work from home are in the same group as those who've just graduated but counted their time coding from their 8-year-old-self's first foray who are in their first year of the job, and thus on lower salary and less perks.

yibg 6y ago

Don’t we also expect to see this result just by the fact the remote employees working for say Bay Area companies get closer to Bay Area comp then low cost of living level comp? On average then you’ll get a higher average salary for remote employees because non remote employees includes a large number of people outside of Seattle, Bay Area, New York etc.

baybal2 6y ago

I also see that as a much simpler explanation, you don't hire unproven people on remote. A higher portion of remotes are temps, and/or having to incorporate in their countries, and carry the burden of doing paperwork.

FpUser 6y ago

Myself being remote and developing mostly products from scratch I completely agree with your conclusion based on my own experience.

k__ 6y ago

Multiple reasons. Choosing the best offer world wide may end up in better pay that choosing the best offer in town.

netcan 6y ago

...and other nonlinear cause-effect things. Working from home is a "benefit," and it can be demanded by developers with more leverage. They can also demand more money.

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

Or what about location? I know a lot of remote workers who go live in countries that are much cheaper where they couldn't find a job that would pay like this.

zerr 6y ago

It lets me escape the local (underpaid) market. That's why I won't work for Gitlab, Mozilla or similar company which pays based on the location, not contribution.

ahallock 6y ago

Exactly. Working remotely by itself doesn't lead to higher pay; it's only a perk of an employee with leverage.