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...
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.)
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.
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.
To me - that seems suspect.
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...