Career and Workplace

Remote Work or More Pay: What Tech Workers Value in One Chart

Drawing from hundreds of real-world job offers, research by Zoe B. Cullen finds that tech workers are willing to give up a quarter of their salary to avoid commuting.

Headshot of Zoe B. Cullen

Featuring Zoe B. Cullen. By Ana Elena Azpúrua on .

Most workers value flexibility, but tech employees are willing to give up 25% of their pay to get it.

An analysis of the real-life job decisions of nearly 1,400 people by Harvard Business School’s Zoe Cullen found that tech workers were willing to sacrifice one-quarter of their total compensation to avoid commuting to the office five days a week. The study suggests that remote work is three to five times more valuable than previous studies had indicated.

Cullen and her coauthors gathered detailed data between May 2023 and December 2024 on offers from employers such as Google, Apple, and Meta. Since then, many tech companies have taken steps to bring workers back to offices in the name of collaboration and productivity.

Based on the average annual pay of $239,000 for common industry positions, like software engineer, product manager, and data scientist, workers would be willing to forgo almost $60,000 to work remotely.

Inside the research

In collaboration with Levels.fyi, researchers conducted a field experiment to collect detailed data on remote work preferences from 1,396 US tech workers. Key sample characteristics include:

  • 32 years
    average age
  • 6.7 years
    average work experience
  • 16%
    female participants, slightly less than in the industry

In the paper “Home Sweet Home: How Much Do Employees Value Remote Work?”, published through the National Bureau of Economic Research in January 2025, Cullen collaborated with Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, assistant professor at Brown University, and Ricardo Perez-Truglia, professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Cullen’s past research found that the median worker was willing to accept a pay cut of about 5% to work remotely. Other studies reported that employees would forego 5-10% of their compensation.

Why the difference? Previous methodologies that focused on hypothetical scenarios might underestimate the actual value of working from home, the paper notes. For this study, the dataset came from “the real-world labor market,” as it included actual job offers rejected and accepted. Each participant had at least two alternatives.

Also, the survey focused on tech workers, who tend to have higher salaries. “Remote work may function as a luxury good, appealing more to high earners, and tech jobs might be better suited for remote work,” they wrote.

Home Sweet Home: How Much Do Employees Value Remote Work?

Cullen, Zoë B., Bobak Pakzad-Hurson, and Ricardo Perez-Truglia. "Home Sweet Home: How Much Do Employees Value Remote Work?" NBER Working Paper Series, No. 33383, January 2025.

Article By:

Ana Elena Azpúrua, Data Visualization and Graphics Editor
Illustrated portrait of Ana Azpúrua, a data visualizations editor at Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge online publication

Topics:

Career and WorkplaceCompensation and BenefitsMotivation and IncentivesRecruitmentWork-Life Balance

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