How to make workers happier with less pay

Workers want remote work so badly they’re willing to take a 25% pay cut to get it, according to a new study from economists at Harvard University, Brown University, and UCLA. 

The study published this week was conducted with Levels.fyi, a compensation benchmarking platform used primarily by technology professionals. The data included job offers, compensation packages, final job choices of survey participants, and whether roles were in-person, hybrid, or remote.

Researchers also incorporated Glassdoor data on employer reputation, employee satisfaction, and local cost-of-living metrics. The key finding: workers were willing to forgo approximately a quarter of their pay for remote work, a figure three to five times larger than previous estimates. This is a shocking result, because earlier studies had typically estimated workers would only take a 5% to 10% pay cut.

But that research was based on surveys, whereas the new report is based on real-world job decision-making. In other words, the older studies were based on claimed beliefs; the new data is based on actual, real-world decisions. 

This research suggests that, in theory, the price of four office worker salaries buys five remote workers. (In practice, there are also additional savings for remote employees because of reduced office-related expenses.)

The research won’t make anyone happy. Pro-remote work advocates won’t like the implication that they can be given lower salaries; opponents won’t like stronger evidence that they should allow remote work. 

Why office mandates spawned a bevy of buzzwords and phrases

It’s true that many jobs can’t be done remotely. When my kitchen catches fire, I don’t want the local firefighters working from home. 

For many employees forced by their employers to work in an office, it feels obvious that their physical presence is obsolete, thanks to remote work technologies such as videoconferencing, instant messaging, project management, cloud storage, remote desktop access, team collaboration platforms, document sharing, and unified communications systems. 

Return-to-office mandates and workplace trends have strained the relationship between employees and employers. This strange new office world has also sparked dozens of phrases coined by disaffected employees to communicate their attitudes on social media.

For example: 

Quiet Quitting: Doing the bare minimum at work without formally resigning.

Quiet Firing: Passive-aggressive tactics to encourage employees to leave without formal termination.

Quiet Hiring: Adding capacity without full-time hires, such as through contractors.

Quiet Cutting: Subtle reduction of employee benefits or opportunities.

Loud Quitting: Public and dramatic resignation announcements.

Hushed Hybrid: Employees working from home without permission. 

Coffee Badging: Employees showing up briefly to “make an appearance” in the office, then leaving to work remotely.

Great Resignation: A wave of employees quitting their jobs, often dramatically.

Micro-Retiring: Gradually withdrawing from work responsibilities or retiring in stages.

Acting Your Wage: Putting in effort proportional to one’s pay.

Monk Mode: Intense focus periods with minimal distractions, often at home after hours. 

Performance Punishment: Being overloaded with others’ work due to one’s own high performance. 

Fake Happy: Pretending to be content while feeling exhausted.

Woliday: Working during annual leave or vacation.

Office Peacocking: Making offices attractive and flashy to entice employees back.

Quitting Guilt: Feeling guilty after quitting an unhealthy job environment.

Lazy Girl Job: Desire for low-effort, less demanding jobs.

Snail Girl Era: Preference for a slower-paced work lifestyle.

Hush Trips: Working remotely in undisclosed locations to avoid office interruptions. 

QuitTok: The subset of TikTok posts by people griping about their jobs. 

Boreout: Workplace boredom causing disengagement or mental health issues.

Bare Minimum Mondays: Doing the least amount of work on Mondays.

Career Cushioning: Preparing for job changes while maintaining current employment.

Rage Applying: Applying to jobs out of frustration with a current job.

Anti-Perks: Employee benefits that are unappealing or detrimental.

Conscious Quitting: Intentionally quitting for personal or ethical reasons.

These phrases are a collective cry for help. But buzzwords used by and about remote workers tell a different story: 

Quiet Thriving: Employees succeeding quietly without seeking attention.

Quiet overworking: The blending of work and home life by remote workers leading to employees working beyond normal hours and into the weekend. 

Proximity Bias: Favoring employees physically present in the office.

Something’s wrong in the modern workplace, partly due to the coercion to make employees cope with an unpleasant commute, extra costs in clothes and gas, office interruptions, and rigid schedules incompatible with child-rearing and two-career households — all because management doesn’t feel comfortable with remote work. 

How remote work is changing our culture

The remote work trend that gathered steam during the COVID-19 pandemic gave many people a taste of a lifestyle without commutes and office buildings. 

Reading the headlines, a casual reader feels there was a rush to remote work in 2020 and 2021, followed by a reversal in recent years. But that’s not what happened, exactly. In reality, on the whole, remote work rose steeply in the first two years of the pandemic and more or less stayed up. In 2019, some 9 million people worked remotely. In 2022, that number jumped to 50 million. And as of 2025, it was still around 36 million. 

Despite pushback against remote work, it’s still a big enough factor to change the culture in small and big ways. 

Remote work is reducing demand for office space, increasing suburban growth, shifting economic activity from urban cores to suburbs, driving migration to mid-sized and more affordable cities, expanding residential space needs, and reshaping workplace culture with greater flexibility (but less social interaction).

The trend hasn’t been kind to some businesses, including downtown restaurants, coffee shops, dry cleaners, public transit systems, office supply retailers, urban gyms, corporate catering services, and commercial real estate firms focused on office leasing.

Other business types, however, are booming: home office furniture companies, video conferencing and collaboration software providers, suburban real estate agencies, home improvement retailers, local delivery services, coworking space operators, and broadband internet providers.

One of the biggest cultural changes is the rise in digital nomad living — working while traveling or temporarily living abroad. Before 2019, fewer than 10 million people lived as digital nomads globally. By the end of 2025, the number is expected to land somewhere between 50 million and 80 million people.

And if the endless chatter on Reddit and other social sites is any indication, there is a huge number of people trying to figure out how to become digital nomads. On Reddit, people are constantly asking about how to get a “digital nomad job.” 

The truth is that there’s no such thing. A job is either remote, or it’s not. If it’s fully remote, then the employee is free to go wherever they want. Many companies have limited positions that are fully remote. And some companies are totally remote, with every employee in the company working remotely full-time. 

Companies friendly to remote work include: Affirm, Allstate, Amgen, Amplify, Atlassian, BELAY, CrowdStrike, Dropbox, HubSpot, Humana, Kraken, Pearson, Pinterest, Reddit, Ryder, Spotify, StackAdapt, Stride Inc., Twilio, and Vista.

By late 2025, remote work is more popular than ever, office work less popular, and smart companies are saving money and attracting top employees by offering the flexibility and freedom of remote work as a perk. And now we know that workers will accept substantially less pay, just for the ability to work anywhere but in the office.