[bradlys]

> One explanation is that Buffer’s sample population may have changed over the years. However, Buffer sampled well over 1,000 employees in each annual report and doesn’t provide any indication that their sampling technique meaningfully deviated from past years.

Sampling technique might not have differed or it might have. I did some deeper diving on the stats because I have a hard time believing remote shot up drastically like it makes it seem and that it suddenly pays great...

2018: https://open.buffer.com/state-remote-work-2018/

2020: https://lp.buffer.com/state-of-remote-work-2020

Compare 2018

> Most of the folks we surveyed work in the software industry (26%) followed by IT and Services (20%) and Marketing (19%). Only 5% of respondents work in Education and 8% in Media and Publishing.

To 2020

> Forty-one percent of those who took the survey work at organizations in software space. Other industries include: IT and Services (19.5 percent); Marketing (8.7 percent); Other (7.3 percent); Financial Services (4.6 percent); Media and Publishing (3.6 percent); Education (3.3 percent); E-commerce (3 percent); Medical and Healthcare (3 percent); Consumer products (2.3 percent); Travel and Tourism (1.6 percent); Non-profit (1.5 percent); Government (0.6 percent); and Law and Legal Services (0.6 percent).

Do we think that software suddenly had a 50-100% rise in engineers working remotely in 2 years? Maybe - but, personally, I'm skeptical. Seems more likely that the way they sampled their population changed.

And it's almost like the increase in software engineers reporting directly correlated with a rise in wages. Go figure...

[onlyrealcuzzo]

I'd be interested to know how this compares to the number of total jobs that pay over $125k. How much has the overall market increased?

According to DQYJD, a full 21% of households are now making more than $125k per year [1].

It doesn't seem that absurd to me for 25% of remote workers to be earning $125k when close to 15% of the general population might be making that much -- especially depending on what the definition of a "remote" worker is...

[1] https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percen...

[ghaff]

I would be interested to see how they qualify respondents with respect to "remote." If it was in the report, I missed it. Presumably there has to be some floor higher than "I travel a quarter of the time" or I work from home Fridays.

I do see something of an increase in the number of tech people who can reasonably be described as working remotely but that does seem a big change in a couple of years. (Though it's not just software engineers but senior people in tech generally.)

[hrktb]

Even “I work from home Fridays” would be a relevant bar I think.

It wouldn’t be allowed, or technically unfit (no access to critical tools) in a lot of companies I’ve seen 10 or even 5 years ago. Someone “working from home” would be considered traveling and lose most of the work resources.

[ghaff]

Fair enough. For many of us in professional tech jobs today, it's easy to forget just how normed working from home now and then has become. In my first longtime job in the computer industry, I would travel some but the expectation was absolutely that I'd be in the office if I weren't even if the weather was crappy, etc. For one thing, if I weren't in the office, I was pretty cut off from routine communications like phone calls, network access, and so forth.

I'm not sure I'd consider one day a week working "remote" but it does point to an expectation of a lot of flexibility for many professional jobs even if they're not technically remote-first.

[rossdavidh]

But isn't that what they're saying? Different kinds of jobs are commonly remote work. I don't think they were implying that the same jobs suddenly got better-paying.

[bradlys]

But then the presumption is that software engineering just shot up a huge amount in 2 years as a total of remote workers.

To me - that seems suspect.

[manicdee]

Or that a bunch of other professions dropped out by a huge amount.