Technology firms have competed over top talent since long before the days when Apple (AAPL) was urging you to think different.
These companies are never shy about pulling out all the stops, and the perks that top companies would use to lure and retain skilled employees are legendary, ranging from chef-cooked lunches to paid parental leave to in-office gyms. But more and more, technology firms' biggest perk these days is that you no longer have to come to them for a job.
According to a survey by the analytics firm The Conference Board, more than four out of 10 job postings for highly-educated jobs at tech companies based in the traditional hubs, California, Oregon and Washington, are now outside of the region. These postings reflect both remote work opportunities and an increase in operations in those cities.
The Conference Board found that the trend actually began before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic made remote work (i.e., signing onto Slack while still in your pajamas) much more common, largely dispelling a long-standing notion some employers held onto that remote working would lead to lower productivity.
But now technology companies are increasingly treating remote work as the new normal, as The Conference Board found that technology job postings outside the West Coast jumped from 30% in 2019 to 43% this year.
Why Are Technology Companies Embracing Work From Home?
Why are tech companies letting more people work from home? The simple answer is that is that if any one company were to put its foot down and demand that employees move to them, they risk losing that talent to a company with a much more lenient approach.
America currently has the tightest labor market in decades, and industries across the board have had to up their wages and offer more perks to attract workers. And one of the biggest perks is the ability to work from home and to not have to relocate for a job.
While the practice has plenty of critics, there's evidence that productivity hasn’t really suffered (a survey from ConnectSolutions found that 77% of those who work remotely at least a few times per month show increased productivity, with 30% doing more work in less time and 24% doing more work in the same period of time) and employees largely like the flexibility.)
So it would seem that working from home is likely to stay, at least in some form.
"The remote work trend is likely to slow down as offices re-open, but a return to pre-pandemic levels is very unlikely," says Agron Nicaj, an associate economist with The Conference Board.
Plus, tech companies based on Silicon Valley are having to face the truth that things have not been golden in the Golden State of late, as wildfires and other symptoms of climate change as well as well as the increasingly high cost of living (the average city in California has about a 38% higher cost of living than the average state anywhere else).
As a result, 38% fewer people are moving to California, and 12% of California residents are moving to other countries, according to a report from the nonpartisan California Policy Lab.
"The ability to hire full-time remote workers allows big tech companies, and other companies, to attract talent even as populations shift," says Nicaj.
There’s also a cost savings for the companies, as the technology firms are willing to pay a higher salary than is typical in certain markets, but one that is still lower than the ones for people who move to, say, San Francisco.
"Recruiting difficulties are not showing signs of alleviating," says Nicaj. "Offering remote work opportunities is a good tool that could allow employers to attract talent in this tight labor market, especially if they are experiencing increased competition from large companies (i.e. West Coast tech companies) that do offer these opportunities."
So Where Are the Jobs?
"Big cities are hubs for talent where there are larger concentration of qualified workers," says Nicaj. "For remote jobs, it presumably doesn’t matter whether you live in a big city or not, but recruiting in a big city increases the odds of finding the right talent."
Texas saw the biggest bump in the survey, with an increase of 7.3% job postings from 2020 to 2021, up from 4.6% before the pandemic. Arlington, Va., Atlanta, Durham, N.C., and New York also saw an increase in job postings.
-- Washington, 4.6% increase
-- New York, 4.2 increase
-- Austin, Texas, 3.9% increase
-- Chicago, 2.0% increase
-- Denver, 1.3% increase
-- Nashville, Tenn., 08% increase
-- Atlanta, 1.3% increase
-- Boston, 2.9% increase
-- Dallas, 1.7% increase
-- Philadelphia, 0.7% increase
In theory, you should be able to work from anywhere, even if for now the job listings are still targeted at people in big cities, just not the big cities on which tech firms normally focus. But if you're qualified for a tech job and you live in a smaller town, it wouldn't hurt to do some searching online and apply.
