The problem I find with remote work usually is that people pay you less than if you work onsite. when it's an on-site position you compete with local people in the market rates. when it's remote you compete with people in India, China etc that can get paid much less.
Another problem I find is that it's harder/impossible for senior level engineers find projects, especially if you need to manage people. companies want their managers to be on-site.
> The problem I find with remote work usually is that people pay you less than if you work onsite.
Is this actually a problem, or even particularly surprising? Remote positions provide massive non-monetary benefits to employees (flexibility in general, but particularly: you can live wherever you want, including on the road, with no commute, in low cost-of-living areas, closer to other things you value, etc). These benefits attract more applicants, which alters the supply/demand balance, with predictable effect on market salary. Remote work should be understood as a win-win, where the employee gets significant quality-of-life and maybe reduced cost of living in exchange for somewhat reduced salary, and the employer gets significantly reduced costs (directly in terms of salary and office space, indirectly in terms of easier recruitment) in exchange for (maybe) somewhat harder management. If you don't like the employee-side trade-off, tough to be you, because you're competing against a lot of people who do.
> when it's remote you compete with people in India, China
It's not clear that this is really true. It's relatively easy to run a distributed organization that has a common native language, legal system, and continent. Language barriers, massive timezone discrepancies, and ..challenging international legal systems make successful management much harder. In practice, it seems that many companies are unwilling to take on those costs and risks.
Except that someone working remotely will usually have to absorb additiona costs of:
- Internet
- Electricity, water and other utilities
- Office maintenance (i.e., how much of his home space is being used by the company? including surface, desks, equipment, etc)
- Sometimes food
In Mexico all this toghether can get to up to $500 USD a month per person. Can't imagine how much that would be in the USA.
If you are working from home in Canada (as a self-employed individual), you can claim some of those expenses on your taxes entirely, and a portion of some others.
I can write off my entire phone and internet bills and all office supplies. I can also include a portion of my rent (or mortgage) and utilities proportional to the size of my office and the total square footage of the dwelling. The actual list of claim-able expenses does not end there.
I also burn a hell of a lot less fuel since I have no commute.
Yeah, that definitely has to be factored into the salary. I choose to pay for an individual insurance plan for these things, including disability insurance which should be accounted for as well.
I don't have any dependents, but that would certainly change things as well.
Most technology people have internet access anyway. I would also assume you would have some place in your house to use as an "office" even if it's just a kitchen table for your laptop or a desk in the corner of your house somewhere.
It's not about shouid. It's about supply and demand. There are only X number of qualified people in any geographic area that are available to work on site. There are Y people who are available to work remotely. The supply of qualified people who are available to work remotely is much greater.
Certainly there are companies that pay remote lower salaries but this isn't always true. Some companies want the best talent and know one of the best ways to make that happen is to not try to under pay any employee that you can find a reason to under pay.
I also disagree that you're competing, at least directly, with someone from the countries you listed. Depends on where you are and who you are, but as a remote employee I'm still working from the same timezone I was working from when I was in the office, it's very cheap to fly me onsite as I'm next to a major airport, and am a native English speaker. Hiring someone who wants to work from their home in the US isn't immediately the equivalent of hiring someone from another country with possible timezone, visa and language barriers.
They call hiring people who live in lower cost of living areas of the US "rural sourcing". That's half the reason to hire remote workers, they are cheaper. Also with rural sourcing, the time zones are more compatible than outsourcing to a foreign country and its easier to arrange occasional onsite face to face meetings.
As far as companies not wanting to hire remote workers for senior level positions, I found it hard to find any senior developer/architect contracting positions that paid well in my local market. All of the companies that wanted my skill set at my price wanted permanent employees. I was going to contract this time around but I ended up takinng a perm position.
One big reason for remote work was so that companies could stop paying big bucks for commercial real estate, which requires big money and long term commitment. But some and now many more seem to be going the extra mile and hire from outside of the major metropolitan areas. That way instead of just saving on real estate, they save on salary too.
The problem I find with remote work usually is that people pay you less than if you work onsite. when it's an on-site position you compete with local people in the market rates. when it's remote you compete with people in India, China etc that can get paid much less. Another problem I find is that it's harder/impossible for senior level engineers find projects, especially if you need to manage people. companies want their managers to be on-site.