Introduction
History shows us that humans are ever developing, and in the past decade, with the internet and computer advancement, and later on the social media, it is safe to assume, knowing the basics of neuroscience, that a change is happening in the neural circuitry of the average human brain, and it is now adapted to receive and interpret information in a form different from older generations. While this usually doesn’t get missed by big companies with a great number of employees, they did miss something this time, and while the Covid-19 pandemic will always be a tragedy for the human race, it did force these companies to be more flexible in managing and retaining their employees while working remotely. In the same breath, it showed the workers that they can handle the responsibility of working from home which is coupled with having a better work-life harmony.
Software Engineering, One of the Best Jobs to Have
For a long time, desired careers were mostly in the fields of medicine, law, education, or government; but since 2006, we see a continuous increase in demand for engineers and engineering degrees around the world. The need for businesses to recruit and compete over talented engineers had created a “compensation” war between them, that skyrocketed the salaries. Between the years 2017-2020, software developer was the #1 most desired job and in 2021 it dropped to #2.
As far as the business, its need to rely on some sort of IT is becoming inevitable in our time. To be able to compete and survive in the world's highly competitive climate, businesses have to keep track of technology trends in their field and adapt to them quickly. To do that, they require qualified employees to take on these important tasks, and that was a major contributor to the demand increase.
As far as fresh high school graduates, an increased interest has been seen, especially during the past decade, in majoring in SW engineering as we discussed above. According to (Wiswall and Zafar, 2015) there are only two major determinants for occupational choice:
Earning expectations
Ability perceptions
One can infer from the results of the study, that if the ability perception is high (the student thinks they can study and later work in a specific field), the only other important factor, is who will pay him/her more.
All engineering fields are considered amongst the highest paid around the world. Entering the engineering workforce provides the individual with great financial benefits and future security. Furthermore, the startup industry is making billions of dollars every year, and almost anyone has the chance to be the next big thing in this new world of technology. Finally, it is well known that engineers have the most flexible matrix of employment and positions, and many continue their studies in business administration to be able to understand the product and the market. Their trajectories both as employees and entrepreneurs are very promising.
Why are software development considered the most suitable for remote work
The truth of the matter is, there are almost no reasons, as far as the daily work of a software engineer that requires him/her to work at the company’s offices (excluding security threats). As any other employee, the engineers take place at the office, which costs money, commuting expenses, and office supplies. While his job, requires basic access to a computer, with an internet connection. It is the same modern scientific management model that for a long time was the reason that employees were provided with better work benefits, that is now relying excessively on control over supplying the needs of the employee. As the well-being and happiness of the employee is a prioritized responsibility for HR departments and mid management, it can only be provided with the presence of employees in the office. Furthermore, there are a lot of company projects and KPIs related to the increase of creativity and motivation of the workers, and the strategy implemented to reach the objectives of these KPIs rarely includes solutions for remote workers.
Post the COVID-19 break and step by step, corporations around the world started working on resuming their normal business activities, including bringing back the workforce, which for many months had been working from home. And to many of these companies’ surprise, they found true resistance and demand from their engineers to work from home, with very convincing arguments, especially after showing the successful results of the months working from home. While many had decided to be stubborn in their demand for all workforce to come back to work from the office, others started providing hybrid solutions, and many more saw the opportunity of providing this as part of their benefits plan to work for them.
The nature of the daily work of a SW engineer and the low requirements as far as the workstation, plus the desire of these employees for a remote working model, had changed the reality of SW engineers’ job. Working from home is not only good for the employee’s well-being but also the bottom line of the company, without being as challenging as other positions in the company might be.
Interesting Facts About Remote Working Engineers
Findings in 2020-2021, show that 86% of engineers work 100% remotely, in comparison to 19% pre-pandemic. 83% of remote working engineers prefer to keep this arrangement long term. That means that roughly, assuming there are about 7.5 million engineers around the world, 6.4 million are currently working remotely, and 5.3 million would like to keep it that way. From the whole workforce of engineering, 70% had been working remotely and now demands to have some sort of remote work arrangement with their employer, this is a huge red flag for HR departments to work extra hours to develop and validate fair and responsible practices for remote workers.
Understanding that the ease in which you can execute the remote employment model is a major factor to whether companies will provide this solution for their employees or not. Some fields of engineering will be more challenging than others for remote work, but the rule of thumb is that as long as the engineering position is related to writing, reporting, analytics, or design, the company and the employee can seriously consider the remote work model to benefit them both.
It is interesting to note that although advanced economies are making huge steps towards a more flexible remote-onsite hybrid model, nations in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East showed higher adoption of remote work models (in India, more than half of all employees work from home).
Post COVID-19, many leaders in technology had shown their interest to incorporate remote work for their employees:
The Productivity Question
The question remains, what about the productivity of employees who work remotely? The answer is rather surprising. A two years study, conducted by “Great Place to Work” of more than 800,000 employees at fortune 500 companies shows that productivity significantly increased (at the biggest point from 74% - 87%) while working from home.
Remote workers spend less time commuting to the office, are less prone to office small talk and distractions, have a better work-life balance and have more control over their time, and they report higher job satisfaction scores, an element correlated with higher productivity and lower turnover.
The 5 Reason Why
Desired by the employee Where the financial benefits and the culture of the organization were once the main two factors on which the potential candidate engineer considered accepting a new position, more than 70% of engineers currently demand a remote work solution.
Essential to compete Beyond the fact that more and more companies are now introducing remote work models to their employees, they also are branding it as part of the benefits for potential candidates. Especially in the engineering field, where the competition over talent is fierce, adopting remote work models will not only help secure talent, but the flexibility that comes with remote employment gives the organization a greater pool of potential candidates.
Easy to execute Remote work comes with its challenges, one of which is remote management and the second is the feasibility of employees performing their tasks from home. The new technologies developed every day and the nature of the software engineering work makes remote work solution rather simple to execute.
Cost-effective Six out of ten employers identify cutting costs as a major benefit of telecommuting. There are a lot of ways where remote work benefits the bottom line of the company like rent, office administration, food, and taxes, plus, companies can cut expenses by having employees in countries with lower salary caps through PO services
More productive A more flexible lifestyle that comes with remote work contributes to the overall well-being of the employee, which in turn, translates to higher productivity. According to different studies, more the 65% of both employees and their managers believe that remote work would increase productivity.
Comments