What makes Pittsburgh a top city for hiring remote software engineers?

The pandemic confirmed what those in tech have long known: You don’t need to go into an office to get your work done. And Pittsburgh software engineers might know that better than those in other cities.

Earlier this month, technical interviewing software company Karat published a report on the best cities for hiring remote software engineers. The report is the second of its kind from Karat, which first published the data for last year after the pandemic forced companies to adapt hybrid or fully remote work models.

Topping the list for both years was Pittsburgh.

The report’s data is based on passing rates of Karat interviews for software engineers, which involves a coding portion. In 2021, the pass rate for Pittsburgh was 40%, a statistic that the report said is comparable to those in tech hubs like the Bay Area, New York or Seattle, all of which were excluded from the report. Coming close behind, also each at 40% were DC, Los Angeles and Portland.

In justifying Pittsburgh’s top ranking, Karat pointed to top computer science programs at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as a growing presence of engineering offices from big tech companies like Google, IBM, Apple and more. That, paired with the low cost of living that has become more enticing during the pandemic, has led to a concentration of tech talent here that stands out from more well known tech hubs, the report said.

Those findings make sense to Rob Knapp, manager of software development and lead architect at D2 Consulting.

“PGH being a top city doesn’t surprise me,” Knapp, a longtime software engineer in the city, wrote in response to a question from Technical.ly in the Code & Supply community Slack. “The cost of living is pretty reasonable and Pittsburgh has a lot to offer during non-work hours. I mean NYC, Chicago or the bay area may offer more, but they are also a lot more expensive and a lot more traffic.”

If more companies are looking to hire talent out of Pittsburgh — remote or otherwise — those employees will use their income to pay for necessities available in the local economy.

Jon Chu, an engineering manager at Rebellion Defense and fellow member of the Code & Supply Slack, added that the distinction could be of mutual benefit to hiring companies and engineers.

“With lower cost of living than many areas you get a form of arbitrage,” he said. The Karat report seems to appeal to larger tech firms used to the high salaries of Silicon Valley, New York and other expensive tech hubs. But in Pittsburgh, “you can offer a very palatable comp package that both sides really like.”

Others challenged the notion that tracking remote tech hiring trends by location is even a relevant statistic to collect at all: “Being a ‘top city in which to hire SWEs’ makes sense as a flex,” wrote Duncan Hutty, a cloud infrastructure and service reliability engineer at numo. “But if one is looking to hire SWEs for remote positions, why should one care at all where they live?”

Certainly, there might not be a reason why the company hiring should care too much about the location of an employee doing remote work, but that can be a factor for the cities where those employees reside.

If more companies are looking to hire talent out of Pittsburgh — remote or otherwise — those employees will use their income to pay for housing, food, recreation and other necessities available in the local economy, supporting small businesses here. Plus, in the long term, should more companies choose to make an in-person return to work, formerly remote software engineers now settled in Pittsburgh might be hesitant to move elsewhere, especially if it means a higher cost of living.

But a shift back to that doesn’t seem likely any time soon, according to a Code & Supply survey of Pittsburgh technologists earlier this year. A majority of respondents said they’d prefer remote work even after the pandemic ends or becomes more manageable. So for now, the hope is that Pittsburgh’s top status as a place to hire remote software engineers will lead to increased income that can feed back into the economy, supporting new startups, small businesses and equitable growth across all industries.

Sophie Burkholder is a 2021-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.