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

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

rinzewind.org

158 pointsrinze54 comments

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.

There's always other proxies for quality given changing life circumstances. Generous parental leave matters much more to me now than office vibe.

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/

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.

These are all great.

The last one is super important.

When they talk about core locations/areas a good signal is if they have close to full timezone coverage, i.e Asia + NA + EU. This generally means you will be able to find collaborators that have some overlap and important meetings are likely to be recorded, etc.

"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."

Huh. It literally never even crossed my mind until you said that to care about where you are if you are remote. As long as you're doing the job, what does it matter where the "not here" you are?

Could be anything from poor management to contractual/legal requirements. For one client, we had to fly from Canada to the US, but could work remotely from any US site. Usually the client would set us up with a nice office a short flight away from home base. There were very specific legal requirements for them, and I had the impression they were generally as flexible as they could be.

For us in Europe that works with personal data, things tend to become complicated as soon we leave the EU, since it is often the case that the data must not leave the union.

In the US there are tax and employment laws that vary by state. Even for a medium-large sized company these may be complicated.

> As long as you're doing the job, what does it matter where the "not here" you are?

Where you are matter for tax paperwork the company has to file.

It can also have legal implications on the company for "having an office".

I am an employer who has employees in dozens of countries and 28 states in the United States currently. I cannot hire anyone who lives in New York due to New York's extremely draconian and aggressive tax laws. If an employee moves to New York, I am forced to terminate them. It's extremely unfortunate New York has set up its tax laws to be so incredibly greedy.

> like remote is some sort of luxury

From personal experience: we are entering times when decent office is actually some sort of luxury. Some companies are closing their offices whatsoever, others are downsizing, and it almost never pretty.

You can find the source that generated the graph here: 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) 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.

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

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).

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)

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

>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.

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!

I think this is true, but in my experience almost every place I worked at, even those that didn’t advertise being “Remote” had pretty flexible policies on remote work for engineers, at least in my anecdotal experience in San Francisco. 90% of the time if I asked my manager to take a week and work remotely from X location the response was “Cool, whatever”. It was always an option but now they are advertising it as a perk. Especially the ads that say you can work one or two days from home per week, which is kind of ridiculous because everyone was already doing that anyway.

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.

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.

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.

yea sure it's not for everybody, but should be totally up to you whether you want remote or onsite.

>"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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

That's a good point. I think I'll start doing that. Hopefully it (in a small way) nudges the industry.

Maybe throw in a 4-day work week too?

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.

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.

It’s too bad because there’s nothing wrong with offices, it’s the implication that you’re required to show up on some kind of schedule or something. “We have a fantastic office locations with free food, cool decor and meeting spaces, and you can go whenever you want”, but remote work is OK as much as you need/want is a great pitch to me.

Yea, fully agreed. I don't care about the existence of an office. I do care about the costs associated with me needing to be in the office. I recently ran the numbers for current job and, assuming I spend $15/meal + $1/cup of coffee, I still lose ~$3/day just commuting when I take advantage of free office breakfast/lunch food + microkitchen coffee. I also do not spend $15/per meal (my breakfast+lunch meal this morning ~$.60 to ~$1.60 depending on cost of ingredients, electricity, and my time).

I would, however, not mind having an optional office (and would actually prefer working for a company like that) so if it's a really hot day or I'm feeling crumby and want to change my scenery for a day or two I have a place I can go.

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.

The Economist did this too:

For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28152174 - Aug 2021 (438 comments)

The charts look much the same.

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

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).

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?

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.

I'm not so sure about that. There are a lot of remote workers who could live anywhere but choose San Francisco or NYC.

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.

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.

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".

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

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

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

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

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

that's neat

Nice graphs! Highcharts is awesome

What is driving this trend?

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com