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Does the author control for geography? Surely remote workers in Europe working for American employers will earn more than their non-remote counterparts, but no

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      > 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-_-employment-status https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#work-_-employ...
- a_imho 7y ago
  Bit of an understatement. Doing a study about remote developers and substituting geography with a proxy. At least for me it would seem really obvious we are disregarding a main factor. What are the numbers if we control for location?
tinyhouse 7y ago
Wouldn't US present the same problem? Remote worker in Montana for a SF based company is likely to make more than its peers working in Montana.

whoisnnamdi 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    > 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-_-employment-status https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#work-_-employ...
a_imho 7y ago
Bit of an understatement. Doing a study about remote developers and substituting geography with a proxy. At least for me it would seem really obvious we are disregarding a main factor. What are the numbers if we control for location?

tinyhouse 7y ago

Wouldn't US present the same problem? Remote worker in Montana for a SF based company is likely to make more than its peers working in Montana.