A Study of Remote and On-site ICT Labor Market Demand using Job Offers from Stack Overflow

Abstract

As the industry is moving towards digitalized solutions and practices, a growth in remote working has been observed with companies embracing flexibility for their workforce. Global crises, such as the coronavirus pandemic, have also accelerated this process, transforming the labor market. This trend is reflected in job portals, that contain an increasing number of remote job advertisements. Recognizing this evolving change, we perform a thorough study in Stack Overflow, to examine the main characteristics of remote working that discriminate it from its on-site counterpart. By collecting and analyzing 8514 job posts and leveraging text mining and graph theory methodologies, we attempt to pinpoint the primary elements that define each category, from dominant technologies to job positions and top seeking industries. The findings suggest that remote working presents differences from traditional working, being mainly associated with the software engineering sector and with well-known software development and data analytics technologies.