7 ms·

Percentage of Hacker News job postings that mention a remote option 2017-2021

158 points by rinze 5y ago

yosito 5y ago
It's interesting to me that, according to the 80-20 rule, the number of jobs mentioning remote went from "basically none" to "basically everything".
gilbetron 5y ago
I wonder how that graph will look in several years times. Will it be a bump that goes back down to near where it was? Seems doubtful. But I don't think we'll see it plateau at 80%, either. Maybe a drift back down to 50% ish? At the beginning of the pandemic, I read a quote from a person that study the histories of pandemics and they said something like, "there will be two worlds, one before Covid, and one after." It seemed like hyperbole then, but not anymore.
- HenryKissinger 5y ago
  Mainstream remote work has arrived, and it's here to stay. White collar occupations outside tech will be forced to adapt and provide similar accommodations. Accountants, financial analysts, clerks. Any job that doesn't require manual labor or physical face time with a client will go remote. People will notice software engineers making 6 figures WFH and ask "Why can't I have that?" I believe this is part of what's fueling the Great Resignation. The disparity in terms of salary and work conditions between the worst jobs in society and the best jobs in society has become so great that a lot of people who used to occupy the worst jobs collectively said "fuck it" and successfully transitioned to better jobs, even if they're still not the best jobs society has to offer. This is also the reason why I believe that teaching will eventually either go fully remote or start paying 6 figures straight out of college. The teaching profession sucks. Teachers understand now that they can earn the same income without having to babysit 30 kids five days a week and deal with the kafkaesque bullshit that is school administration.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    I don’t see software engineering going fully remote. I certainly hope not; I’d have to retrain. The last 19 months have been enough to convince me I’ll never voluntarily do WFH for more than a day or so a time again.
    - tester756 5y ago
      yea sure it's not for everybody, but should be totally up to you whether you want remote or onsite.
- rtutz 5y ago
  >"there will be two worlds, one before Covid, and one after." However at the same time this cannot be applied to all areas of life. While a kind of awakening may have taken place at work, the importance of social interactions became particularly visible on the other side. I assume that the majority would rather like to return to the pre-covid era, and will strive for it.
  - datameta 5y ago
    If anything I have seen communities come together more than before. The fact that everyone now shares a somewhat similar challenging experience, we can choose to relate to each other more easily.
  - oblio 5y ago
    Some things will change for the long term, for example increased remote work. However, there will be definitely a ton of people wanting go get their 2-3+ years back and to take advantage of life especially since so many have seen or been around death for so long. Prepare for the New Roaring Twenties.
- gravypod 5y ago
  I don't think I'd consider working in office for a company for my next position. All recruiters that email me in office work are ignored, all remote options get a reply and go on a list for when I'm looking again. I want to eventually own a home but that's not going to happen for a long while in the Northern NJ area for me. For some place with temperatures I prefer more, lower taxes, and cheaper cost of living? It's definitely a possibility already.
  - HenryKissinger 5y ago
    > All recruiters that email me in office work are ignored I would write a short reply that you won't consider their offers solely because of the office work requirement. Otherwise they can't be certain why they're being ignored. Make it abundantly clear why you're not interested. So when their managers grill them for low performance they can show them: Here boss, people aren't biting because we're asking them to come into the office. We need to change this asap.
    - gravypod 5y ago
      That's a good point. I think I'll start doing that. Hopefully it (in a small way) nudges the industry.
      - erikerikson 5y ago
        Maybe throw in a 4-day work week too?
        piva00 5y ago
        I've been floating that sometimes, just to gauge interest. I tell them that I'd be willing to change if a 4-day work week would be offered, at least covering my current salary. It's a 20% increase in pay and I'd absolutely love to work Mon-Thu.
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      Considering I get fire-bombed by recruiters who don't even consider my geographic location, skills or stated desires, and who also can't be bothered to even acknowledge me when I respond like you suggest, I'd say don't waste your time. The vast majority of recruiters only want something from you and treat you like garbage once they're not going to get it. The profession's abysmal reputation is well deserved.
- downrightmike 5y ago
  Before the industrial revolution, most people worked from home. Outside of farmers we can think about jewelers, watch/clock makers, cobblers. There were those that worked in work houses because they were destitute.
version_five 5y ago
Remote options are increasing, but I bet so is the use of "remote" as a promotional tool in job ads, where technically it's on the books but so infeasible as to be irrelevant when you look at how the job has to be performed (e.g. on site at clients or must be available for regular travel to city x)
- a_imho 5y ago
  This is my experience as well. Also the majority of 'remote' ads are only considering the US really, which is pretty tiresome to shift through. Then there are the ads where in theory it is possible to hire someone remotely but they would rather have someone from nearby (I totally get this sentiment, but there should be a more useful term for this instead of remote), and last but not least the remote-as-in-cost-cutting (contractors, outsourcing) where the final offer will be considered not on the skills or value add you would bring to the table, but rather where on the map you are located at. There are still only a handful of companies looking for remote employees. tldr; the revolution is still a bit further down the road
  - ghaff 5y ago
    >a more useful term for this instead of remote Flex or hybrid seems to be most common. So can work from home some days but will come into the office, possibly on a schedule, on a fairly regular basis. (With the implication you need to be within some semblance of commuting distance.) Nothing wrong with that of course. Flexibility is good but it obviously has constraints that full remote doesn't.
    - skeeter2020 5y ago
      That's not what the GP is saying though; the employer is not offering a mix (which as what my team almost universally wants) but "we want someone local but will consider remote as a second-place option". The later is the worst scenario for remote as it says there are two classes of employees: co-located, then remote. In this case, RUN!
- oceanplexian 5y ago
wakamoleguy 5y ago
Since the Y axis only goes to 80%, the chart appears at first to have a bigger absolute jump than it actually does. For example, it makes it harder to tell at a glance that there are about as many (percentage-wise) remote-not-ok postings now as there were remote-ok postings several years ago. The actual change is amazing, though! It wouldn't be possible to tell from the posts themselves, but I wonder how many of these roles are actually filled with remote workers. Do you think employers in that middle 60% seriously consider remote candidates, or are they just including it to fit in? Or perhaps the move towards remote work has led to more postings overall. Over time, I'm curious if we'll see statistics on tenure and engagement across remote and in-person employees. Are there similar examples from history where multiple small talent pools were (relatively suddenly) merged together into one big market?
jpgvm 5y ago
Having worked primarily remote for the last 10 years I welcome this change in general but also somewhat lament the loss of the old status quo. It's great because now many others that weren't as fortunate as me are now able to experience something I have had for a long time, many of my friends and family are enjoying new freedoms and greater amounts of personal time because commutes have been eliminated etc. The downside (however minor) is I can't easily use this as the same proxy for "company I think I would like to work for" that I did in the past. My old formula for evaluating opportunities was to filter for places that would accept full time remote and then filter for those willing to pay full market rates and then decide from there. The latter half of that funnel is still likely to be highly effective as companies attempt to lowball people by making it out like remote is some sort of luxury but the entry to the funnel just got a whole lot bigger so I need to do a ton more filtering now. I'm optimistic though, this has opened up a lot of companies I otherwise would have liked to work for but had draconian hiring policies w.r.t fully remote.
- ferdowsi 5y ago
  There's always other proxies for quality given changing life circumstances. Generous parental leave matters much more to me now than office vibe.
- SkyPuncher 5y ago
  I have worked remotely for about 7 years now. I share your sentiment. With that being said, the signals are still there - just a bit more nuanced. Gitlab has good terminology around this: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stages/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stages/ My signals: * Do they talk about central office locations where certain people/groups of people work? Does being in that location give you advantage. * Do they expect you to be in the same chair/desk/location everyday? I don't care to do #vanlife, but I want the flexibility to work from a hotel/other location from time to time. * How does the team manage work hours? How much of the workday needs to be "the same". In my view, ideal teams have some core hours where it's easy to collaborate then leave it to individuals to round out a productive day elsewhere.
  - 5y ago
mrfusion 5y ago
I’m surprised it was up to 20% before.
hammock 5y ago
What is driving this trend?
- ResearchCode 5y ago
  Companies made a concession to workers through Force majeure and workers realized office work is miserable and unproductive. Micro-managers try to herd the cattle back into offices but with mixed success.
Waterluvian 5y ago
Happy to see the curve was trending upwards even before covid.
dataviz1000 5y ago
We are going to see lots of digital nomad and work vacation services develop over the next few years as people realize that they can live a week or month in a different city working being productive the whole time. There are already co-working / co-living services but now expect people in tech living and working in the jungles of Brazil, on the beaches of Uruguay, or or within riding distance of mounting biking trails every morning in Arkansas. Places like Puerto Rico which is still reeling from the devastation of hurricane Maria 4 years ago will have an opportunity to participate in the digital nomad ecosystem. There is a co-working facility on the North - Western corner of the island with generator backup and fiber internet. Hopefully this will have a positive benefit on remote exotic places. Prepare for an another work culture shift.
- benatkin 5y ago
  I'm not so sure about that. There are a lot of remote workers who could live anywhere but choose San Francisco or NYC.
- shahbaby 5y ago
  This seems like an even worse arrangement than working from an office. Most tech jobs demand time, focus and a strong wifi connection. Good luck doing that from the jungles of Brazil.
  - OmarIsmail 5y ago
    For now. But now that the pool of people that could work from the jungles of Brazil has increased 10-100x there’s a lot more incentive to making that possible.
mountaineer 5y ago
cool to see others using this data, I've been tracking this trend and more over at https://www.hntrends.com/2021/july.html https://www.hntrends.com/2021/july.html
- codingclaws 5y ago
  that's neat
- malshe 5y ago
  Nice graphs! Highcharts is awesome
rossdavidh 5y ago
I have often worked remote, even before pandemic lockdowns, and it works fine for me, but I am a little concerned about the impact on the next generation of programmers. There are advantages to both old and especially new programmers, that neither experienced nor inexperienced programmers are fully aware of, to having a mix of experience levels in the same office area. Remote work allows for the conscious, I-need-to-know-x-so-I'll-ask-someone kind of interaction, but it's not as good at the spontaneous and unplanned learning from observing or talking to others. It's difficult to measure, but I believe it's significant. I'm sure experienced programmers lose out from this as well, but my guess is that the impact is less, and in any case they're not just starting their career so the damage is less. I worry that the younger generation is kind of getting screwed by this change (as with so much else in the last couple decades).
dang 5y ago
The Economist did this too: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28152174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28152174 - Aug 2021 (438 comments) The charts look much the same.
- rinze 5y ago
  Damn, I didn't know this! Anyway, it's good to see that at least we reached the same conclusion. Thanks for the link.
BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
This is great. Next please track the percentage of Hacker News job postings that give a salary number.
zsmi 5y ago
You can find the source that generated the graph here: https://github.com/rinze/hn_remote/blob/main/hn_remote_main.R https://github.com/rinze/hn_remote/blob/main/hn_remote_main.... I didn't go through the raw dataset (which is generated by this query, https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring) but two obvious issues with the count are, it didn't filter out duplicates and it's just grep'ing the post for the word remote. So for example, "remote work not allowed," counts as a posting for remote work. I have no doubt the demand for remote work is up but I am not sure this count accurately measures by how much, even for just hacker news postings.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pzo 5y ago
  On top of that 'remote' has many different meaning these days e.g: a) remote allowed but you have to be in the same city just in case we need you in office b) remote allowed but we need you at least 1 day in office c) remote allowed but you have to be in our country d) remote allowed but from time to time maybe you will need to be/fly to our office e) remote allowed for the time being but at one point after it's safe we need you in the office
  - kesselvon 5y ago
    The country requirement is because having an employee in a different country is a big regulatory endeavor. Plus if you're doing a lot of international traveling while being directly employed, you are probably breaking immigration law wherever you're going (you're not allowed to work on a tourist visa, even if its remotely).
bgro 5y ago
"This is a remote position. You will be working remotely from your home, at our office."

158 points by rinze 5y ago

It's interesting to me that, according to the 80-20 rule, the number of jobs mentioning remote went from "basically none" to "basically everything".

gilbetron 5y ago

I wonder how that graph will look in several years times. Will it be a bump that goes back down to near where it was? Seems doubtful. But I don't think we'll see it plateau at 80%, either. Maybe a drift back down to 50% ish? At the beginning of the pandemic, I read a quote from a person that study the histories of pandemics and they said something like, "there will be two worlds, one before Covid, and one after." It seemed like hyperbole then, but not anymore.

HenryKissinger 5y ago
Mainstream remote work has arrived, and it's here to stay. White collar occupations outside tech will be forced to adapt and provide similar accommodations. Accountants, financial analysts, clerks. Any job that doesn't require manual labor or physical face time with a client will go remote. People will notice software engineers making 6 figures WFH and ask "Why can't I have that?" I believe this is part of what's fueling the Great Resignation. The disparity in terms of salary and work conditions between the worst jobs in society and the best jobs in society has become so great that a lot of people who used to occupy the worst jobs collectively said "fuck it" and successfully transitioned to better jobs, even if they're still not the best jobs society has to offer. This is also the reason why I believe that teaching will eventually either go fully remote or start paying 6 figures straight out of college. The teaching profession sucks. Teachers understand now that they can earn the same income without having to babysit 30 kids five days a week and deal with the kafkaesque bullshit that is school administration.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  I don’t see software engineering going fully remote. I certainly hope not; I’d have to retrain. The last 19 months have been enough to convince me I’ll never voluntarily do WFH for more than a day or so a time again.
  - tester756 5y ago
    yea sure it's not for everybody, but should be totally up to you whether you want remote or onsite.
rtutz 5y ago
>"there will be two worlds, one before Covid, and one after." However at the same time this cannot be applied to all areas of life. While a kind of awakening may have taken place at work, the importance of social interactions became particularly visible on the other side. I assume that the majority would rather like to return to the pre-covid era, and will strive for it.
- datameta 5y ago
  If anything I have seen communities come together more than before. The fact that everyone now shares a somewhat similar challenging experience, we can choose to relate to each other more easily.
- oblio 5y ago
  Some things will change for the long term, for example increased remote work. However, there will be definitely a ton of people wanting go get their 2-3+ years back and to take advantage of life especially since so many have seen or been around death for so long. Prepare for the New Roaring Twenties.
gravypod 5y ago
I don't think I'd consider working in office for a company for my next position. All recruiters that email me in office work are ignored, all remote options get a reply and go on a list for when I'm looking again. I want to eventually own a home but that's not going to happen for a long while in the Northern NJ area for me. For some place with temperatures I prefer more, lower taxes, and cheaper cost of living? It's definitely a possibility already.
- HenryKissinger 5y ago
  > All recruiters that email me in office work are ignored I would write a short reply that you won't consider their offers solely because of the office work requirement. Otherwise they can't be certain why they're being ignored. Make it abundantly clear why you're not interested. So when their managers grill them for low performance they can show them: Here boss, people aren't biting because we're asking them to come into the office. We need to change this asap.
  - gravypod 5y ago
    That's a good point. I think I'll start doing that. Hopefully it (in a small way) nudges the industry.
    - erikerikson 5y ago
      Maybe throw in a 4-day work week too?
      - piva00 5y ago
        I've been floating that sometimes, just to gauge interest. I tell them that I'd be willing to change if a 4-day work week would be offered, at least covering my current salary. It's a 20% increase in pay and I'd absolutely love to work Mon-Thu.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    Considering I get fire-bombed by recruiters who don't even consider my geographic location, skills or stated desires, and who also can't be bothered to even acknowledge me when I respond like you suggest, I'd say don't waste your time. The vast majority of recruiters only want something from you and treat you like garbage once they're not going to get it. The profession's abysmal reputation is well deserved.
downrightmike 5y ago
Before the industrial revolution, most people worked from home. Outside of farmers we can think about jewelers, watch/clock makers, cobblers. There were those that worked in work houses because they were destitute.

version_five 5y ago

Remote options are increasing, but I bet so is the use of "remote" as a promotional tool in job ads, where technically it's on the books but so infeasible as to be irrelevant when you look at how the job has to be performed (e.g. on site at clients or must be available for regular travel to city x)

a_imho 5y ago
This is my experience as well. Also the majority of 'remote' ads are only considering the US really, which is pretty tiresome to shift through. Then there are the ads where in theory it is possible to hire someone remotely but they would rather have someone from nearby (I totally get this sentiment, but there should be a more useful term for this instead of remote), and last but not least the remote-as-in-cost-cutting (contractors, outsourcing) where the final offer will be considered not on the skills or value add you would bring to the table, but rather where on the map you are located at. There are still only a handful of companies looking for remote employees. tldr; the revolution is still a bit further down the road
- ghaff 5y ago
  >a more useful term for this instead of remote Flex or hybrid seems to be most common. So can work from home some days but will come into the office, possibly on a schedule, on a fairly regular basis. (With the implication you need to be within some semblance of commuting distance.) Nothing wrong with that of course. Flexibility is good but it obviously has constraints that full remote doesn't.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    That's not what the GP is saying though; the employer is not offering a mix (which as what my team almost universally wants) but "we want someone local but will consider remote as a second-place option". The later is the worst scenario for remote as it says there are two classes of employees: co-located, then remote. In this case, RUN!
oceanplexian 5y ago

wakamoleguy 5y ago

Since the Y axis only goes to 80%, the chart appears at first to have a bigger absolute jump than it actually does. For example, it makes it harder to tell at a glance that there are about as many (percentage-wise) remote-not-ok postings now as there were remote-ok postings several years ago. The actual change is amazing, though! It wouldn't be possible to tell from the posts themselves, but I wonder how many of these roles are actually filled with remote workers. Do you think employers in that middle 60% seriously consider remote candidates, or are they just including it to fit in? Or perhaps the move towards remote work has led to more postings overall. Over time, I'm curious if we'll see statistics on tenure and engagement across remote and in-person employees. Are there similar examples from history where multiple small talent pools were (relatively suddenly) merged together into one big market?

jpgvm 5y ago

Having worked primarily remote for the last 10 years I welcome this change in general but also somewhat lament the loss of the old status quo. It's great because now many others that weren't as fortunate as me are now able to experience something I have had for a long time, many of my friends and family are enjoying new freedoms and greater amounts of personal time because commutes have been eliminated etc. The downside (however minor) is I can't easily use this as the same proxy for "company I think I would like to work for" that I did in the past. My old formula for evaluating opportunities was to filter for places that would accept full time remote and then filter for those willing to pay full market rates and then decide from there. The latter half of that funnel is still likely to be highly effective as companies attempt to lowball people by making it out like remote is some sort of luxury but the entry to the funnel just got a whole lot bigger so I need to do a ton more filtering now. I'm optimistic though, this has opened up a lot of companies I otherwise would have liked to work for but had draconian hiring policies w.r.t fully remote.

ferdowsi 5y ago
There's always other proxies for quality given changing life circumstances. Generous parental leave matters much more to me now than office vibe.
SkyPuncher 5y ago
I have worked remotely for about 7 years now. I share your sentiment. With that being said, the signals are still there - just a bit more nuanced. Gitlab has good terminology around this: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stages/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stages/ My signals: * Do they talk about central office locations where certain people/groups of people work? Does being in that location give you advantage. * Do they expect you to be in the same chair/desk/location everyday? I don't care to do #vanlife, but I want the flexibility to work from a hotel/other location from time to time. * How does the team manage work hours? How much of the workday needs to be "the same". In my view, ideal teams have some core hours where it's easy to collaborate then leave it to individuals to round out a productive day elsewhere.
- 5y ago

mrfusion 5y ago

I’m surprised it was up to 20% before.

hammock 5y ago

What is driving this trend?

ResearchCode 5y ago
Companies made a concession to workers through Force majeure and workers realized office work is miserable and unproductive. Micro-managers try to herd the cattle back into offices but with mixed success.

Waterluvian 5y ago

Happy to see the curve was trending upwards even before covid.

dataviz1000 5y ago

We are going to see lots of digital nomad and work vacation services develop over the next few years as people realize that they can live a week or month in a different city working being productive the whole time. There are already co-working / co-living services but now expect people in tech living and working in the jungles of Brazil, on the beaches of Uruguay, or or within riding distance of mounting biking trails every morning in Arkansas. Places like Puerto Rico which is still reeling from the devastation of hurricane Maria 4 years ago will have an opportunity to participate in the digital nomad ecosystem. There is a co-working facility on the North - Western corner of the island with generator backup and fiber internet. Hopefully this will have a positive benefit on remote exotic places. Prepare for an another work culture shift.

benatkin 5y ago
I'm not so sure about that. There are a lot of remote workers who could live anywhere but choose San Francisco or NYC.
shahbaby 5y ago
This seems like an even worse arrangement than working from an office. Most tech jobs demand time, focus and a strong wifi connection. Good luck doing that from the jungles of Brazil.
- OmarIsmail 5y ago
  For now. But now that the pool of people that could work from the jungles of Brazil has increased 10-100x there’s a lot more incentive to making that possible.

mountaineer 5y ago

cool to see others using this data, I've been tracking this trend and more over at https://www.hntrends.com/2021/july.html https://www.hntrends.com/2021/july.html

codingclaws 5y ago
that's neat
malshe 5y ago
Nice graphs! Highcharts is awesome

rossdavidh 5y ago

I have often worked remote, even before pandemic lockdowns, and it works fine for me, but I am a little concerned about the impact on the next generation of programmers. There are advantages to both old and especially new programmers, that neither experienced nor inexperienced programmers are fully aware of, to having a mix of experience levels in the same office area. Remote work allows for the conscious, I-need-to-know-x-so-I'll-ask-someone kind of interaction, but it's not as good at the spontaneous and unplanned learning from observing or talking to others. It's difficult to measure, but I believe it's significant. I'm sure experienced programmers lose out from this as well, but my guess is that the impact is less, and in any case they're not just starting their career so the damage is less. I worry that the younger generation is kind of getting screwed by this change (as with so much else in the last couple decades).

dang 5y ago

The Economist did this too: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28152174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28152174 - Aug 2021 (438 comments) The charts look much the same.

rinze 5y ago
Damn, I didn't know this! Anyway, it's good to see that at least we reached the same conclusion. Thanks for the link.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago

This is great. Next please track the percentage of Hacker News job postings that give a salary number.

zsmi 5y ago

You can find the source that generated the graph here: https://github.com/rinze/hn_remote/blob/main/hn_remote_main.R https://github.com/rinze/hn_remote/blob/main/hn_remote_main.... I didn't go through the raw dataset (which is generated by this query, https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring) but two obvious issues with the count are, it didn't filter out duplicates and it's just grep'ing the post for the word remote. So for example, "remote work not allowed," counts as a posting for remote work. I have no doubt the demand for remote work is up but I am not sure this count accurately measures by how much, even for just hacker news postings.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pzo 5y ago
On top of that 'remote' has many different meaning these days e.g: a) remote allowed but you have to be in the same city just in case we need you in office b) remote allowed but we need you at least 1 day in office c) remote allowed but you have to be in our country d) remote allowed but from time to time maybe you will need to be/fly to our office e) remote allowed for the time being but at one point after it's safe we need you in the office
- kesselvon 5y ago
  The country requirement is because having an employee in a different country is a big regulatory endeavor. Plus if you're doing a lot of international traveling while being directly employed, you are probably breaking immigration law wherever you're going (you're not allowed to work on a tourist visa, even if its remotely).

bgro 5y ago

"This is a remote position. You will be working remotely from your home, at our office."