Working from home might be good for your wallet as well as your mental health

Working from home often pays more than working in an office for jobs in the tech industry, new research has claimed.

Collected data on more than six million jobs ads from 2022 from employee resource Glassdoor and found that web developer and software engineering roles had the most amount of remote opportunities compared to other professions, making up 37% and 36% of the total remote job market respectively.

Web developers working from home could also earn $22,508 more on average than their on premise counterparts, which is a 37% increase. The percentage difference between remote and office salaries for software engineers is slightly less, but overall they get paid more.

Salary plus benefits

The situation is largely the same for UK tech workers too. Again, web developers and software engineers make up the largest proportion of jobs, at 31% and 29% respectively, with the former earning £13,000 more than the average for the role, and £6,500 for the latter.

Employees are the ones leading the way in this shift, and they are the ones who expect and seek out roles that offer flexible and working arrangements. So in order for company’s to acquire their much needed talents, they are advertising roles with these draws in mind.

Aside from specific job roles, having analyzed industries in general. In the UK, the most popular industry for remote opportunities was IT, with 13.9%. In the US, IT came third with 15.4%, beaten by media and communication (15%) and management and consulting (19.4%) industries.

Regarding the benefits of remote working for both employers and employees, with a “much larger selection of top tier candidates and a reduced need for costly office space among other benefits” for the former and “increased flexibility and the potential opportunity to work from anywhere in the world” for the latter.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic forced many businesses to adopt working practices, arguments have come in from both sides over the sustained commitment to such arrangements.

So called hybrid working is now the latest trend, which seems to be striking a balance between new and traditional job culture, where employees have the choice to come into the office at certain times and stay at home at others. It allows for flexible working hours at times that suit the individual best.

Additional research from Slack found that employees may leave to find new work if hybrid working isn’t available, as many workers had greater job satisfaction and felt less stress when they could work this way.

On the flipside, employers are faced with a greater security challenge as various endpoints are spread across numerous home networks, so protecting data is more crucial than ever and needs the proper attention it deserves.