Are the days of elite-high paying remote jobs in finance over? Not yet, but there are troubling signs. High-paying remote jobs are down 60% according to a study from remote jobs site Ladders, but how has that affected fintech?
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Banks and hedge funds have always prioritized the office, but fintech has historically been the exception. Many of the largest and highest paying firms are remote-first, and others have a high percentage of roles available for remote workers. We’ve gone through the top 21 on our list of highest paying fintechs, breaking down how many roles are advertised as open to remote workers.
Remote-first software engineers will be happy to know that the two highest paying fintechs for engineers are still remote first. But while Plaid and OpenSea may pay well, but there are only 41 current open jobs between them, so getting in won’t be easy.
When we looked at these figures in August of last year, just under 50% of jobs at Stripe were available remotely. Now, as jobs skyrocket, that number has dropped almost 10 percentage points. At Monzo, the top paying fintech in the UK, the ratio of remote jobs has fallen by over 20 percentage points. Coinbase is hiring lots more people, but, staggeringly, its remote job ratio is down by 50 percentage points.
Fintechs offering next to no work from home options include in-office advocates Robinhood, and equity management infrastructure platform Carta. Carta has been adamant about its in-office stance since bringing staff back from covid, while Robinhood has been accelerating its in-office push over the past few years. Robinhood staff generate a seriously high amount of revenue per employee, so perhaps it can afford to pay for office space.
Beyond employee satisfaction, there are other reasons why employers might opt for remote working. For example, pay transparency laws in New York and San Francisco (where many of these fintechs are based) don’t necessarily apply to remote jobs, meaning employers can omit them and potentially offer lower pay. Many, like Stripe and ServiceTitan, publish salary information anyway.
Ultimately, the value of a role, good or bad, comes down to more than whether it’s remote. Glassdoor reviews for Robinhood in 2024 praise the “opportunity to learn” from “some really solid people,” but criticize the work-life balance. Reviews for Plaid, meanwhile, say work-life balance “isn’t crazy” with “a lot of opportunity for career growth,” but collaborating with teams across different regions can be frustrating. Stripe ensures its teams are entirely hybrid/in-office, or entirely remote, to compensate for this.
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