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How Remote Work Will Change Tech Salaries Amidst the Pandemic

When it comes to salaries, there is a wide range of factors that go into deciding the final figure. Location, skills utilized, difficulty, value, and even the employees themselves are looked at when deciding what a salary should be. During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, remote work has become a new factor that companies are being forced to consider when creating salaries for tech-based jobs.

Whether the effects of remote work result in higher or lower wages, work from home is here to stay even after the pandemic dies down. It is nearly impossible to predict all the salary changes that remote work will cause during the pandemic, but some of those changes can already be seen today.

Productivity

Obviously, employees who complete more work successfully are likely to receive higher salaries. The incentive for being a good worker is making more money and the chance to grow in your career. Keeping that in mind, remote work is going to have an effect on productivity which will directly impact salaries. Fast Company discussed how employees may have a harder time in their jobs with a lack of accountability, but those are for more traditional jobs.

Tech-based jobs, however, may not face this same limitation because the work itself hasn’t really changed. For example, professionals within a cybersecurity career work on computers all day using penetration testing and malware analysis to protect the software companies’ use. For people in this profession, remote work just changes their location, rather than the work itself.

This lack of disruption in their workflow may allow tech workers to keep productivity high, whereas people in traditional jobs may see a loss of productivity. Overall, this means that remote work could result in higher salaries for tech jobs, while other jobs see a decline in salary due to less work getting done.

Diversification

One amazing benefit of remote work is the ability to source capable employees from anywhere in the world. No matter your age or location, a company can hire you if you can do the job. With that in mind, the workforce as a whole is going to become flooded with employees who boast a versatile set of skills.

There are new forms of tech-based education popping up all around the world, such as Python bootcamps which teach people the basics of coding. When education such as this becomes available for all, the number of employees with a wide range of skills naturally increases. 

As the number of employees with diverse tech skills continues to rise, so too will the number of unique jobs that companies value. A high level of skills comes hand in hand with a higher salary, and the ability to obtain tech skills has never been easier for those who are willing. This may lead to a trend of higher salaries overall in tech jobs.

Location

Unfortunately, not all changes to tech salaries due to remote work can be beneficial. The lack of a physical office will lower overall salaries for tech workers in some areas. Mainly, it will pop the tech bubble of Silicon Valley and the higher housing prices that have come hand in hand with that.

As online education options become more and more popular, and highly skilled employees can be sourced from out-of-state locations, there will be no need to pad a salary to account for a high housing cost. You may receive a high base salary, but that may not include any considerations for your rent. After all, why should a company hire someone for a higher salary simply because they live in the state? It would be far easier to higher someone who just graduated from an accredited coding bootcamp who’s willing to take a lower salary.

A lack of a physical location isn’t going to destroy tech salaries, but it may make them marginally lower and it will be directly due to the prevalence of remote work.

Remote Work for Salaries: Good or Bad?

In the end, there’s nothing that can be done to stop the change remote work will have on salaries for tech jobs. It’s also impossible to predict the exact changes. Keeping that in mind, it’s important to remember that tech jobs have higher salaries than other career paths, on average, and tech jobs are the future of work. Due to this, the salaries for tech jobs will still be higher than what is currently seen, just maybe not as high due to remote work.

The post How Remote Work Will Change Tech Salaries Amidst the Pandemic was first published on Coworkaholic.

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