Where things settled
After several years of movement, most knowledge-work sectors converged on hybrid — commonly two to three office days a week.
Fully remote roles remain widely available, particularly in software engineering, design, technical writing, performance marketing and customer success. A distinct category of fully distributed companies operates without a head office at all, and these generally offer the best remote experience because the entire organisation is built around it.
At the other end, some large employers reinstated full office attendance. The pattern that matters is not the average but the specific employer, since practice varies enormously between companies in the same sector.
How remote pay is set
Three models are in use, and which one applies affects your earnings more than the headline figure.
Some employers pay a single rate regardless of location, usually benchmarked to a major market. This is the most favourable arrangement if you live somewhere with lower costs, and it is most common among fully distributed companies.
Others apply location-based adjustment, setting pay against local market rates. Larger employers tend to use this. A third group uses regional tiers, grouping countries into bands.
Ask directly which model applies and — importantly — whether your pay would change if you relocated. That question catches out people who move somewhere cheaper and discover a pay cut follows.
The cross-border complications
Working from a different country than your employer creates real issues that surface late and are expensive to fix.
Tax residency is the main one. Spending significant time in a country generally creates a tax obligation there, and rules on how many days trigger it vary. Employers can also create a permanent establishment liability by having staff in a country where they have no entity, which is why many prohibit it outright.
Employment structure follows from this. Where a company has no local entity, it may hire through an employer of record, or engage you as a contractor. The second changes your position substantially — usually no paid leave, no sick pay, no notice period and different tax obligations. Establish which applies before accepting.
Remote work visas
A growing number of countries now offer visas specifically for people employed abroad who want to live there legally.
Portugal, Spain, Estonia, Croatia, Greece, the UAE, Costa Rica, Indonesia and others operate schemes with varying income thresholds and durations. They typically clarify residence and sometimes offer favourable tax treatment for an initial period.
The details vary enough that generalisation is unhelpful — check the current requirements for the specific country, and confirm your employer permits it. Working abroad without checking your contract is a common way to create problems for both parties.
Progression and visibility
The most substantiated concern about remote work is not productivity but progression.
In hybrid organisations where some colleagues are regularly present with decision-makers, remote staff can be at a disadvantage for promotion and high-profile work — not through deliberate bias so much as through informal proximity. Fully distributed companies tend to be fairer because nobody has the advantage.
If you work remotely in a hybrid organisation, compensate deliberately: make contributions visible in writing, attend the moments that genuinely matter in person, and have explicit career conversations rather than assuming good work will be noticed.
What to ask before accepting
Several questions distinguish a good remote role from a frustrating one, and none are awkward to ask.
What proportion of the team is remote, and is leadership? A remote employee in an otherwise co-located company has a different experience from one in a distributed team. How many hours of time zone overlap are required, and when are the core meetings? An eight-hour difference can mean permanently working evenings.
Is the culture genuinely asynchronous — are decisions documented in writing, or made in calls you may not be in? What is the office attendance expectation in practice rather than in policy? And would relocating change your pay?
Where this is heading
A few things look reasonably durable, with the usual caution about predictions.
Hybrid appears settled as the default in most professional sectors. Fully distributed companies are a stable minority rather than a growing majority. Competition for genuinely remote roles is higher than for hybrid ones, because the applicant pool is global.
The more interesting long-term effect is on where people can afford to live. Remote-capable professionals earning metropolitan salaries in smaller cities and towns is now an established pattern, and it is changing housing markets in some regions more visibly than it changed offices.