For the last number of years, it seemed that remote working was the future and your physical presence wasn't all that important. However, return-to-office mandates have since come in thick and fast, and many modern workforces are either moving to, or have already moved, to hybrid ways of working.
According to the latest EY Future Workplace Index, full-time remote working plummeted from 34% in 2022 in the U.S. to just 1% in 2023. Meanwhile, multiple surveys reveal that remote workers are less likely to be promoted than in-office colleagues, and this is echoed in recent research from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Location still matters. So much so that personal finance company WalletHub has released a list of the best and worst areas for STEM careers in the U.S., and the top billing might surprise you. For this research, the company compared the 100 most-populated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), or metro areas for short, across three categories: professional opportunities, STEM-friendliness and quality of life, and weighted each evenly.
Simply the best
Making the top ten, in order from one to ten, are Austin, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston, Sacramento, San Jose, San Francisco, Pittsburg, Madison, and Minneapolis.
While many may expect San Francisco to have received top billing, the tech hub scored low in the quality of life ranking (61), bringing down its overall average, and placement to seventh. On the east coast, New York placed 34th, despite placing 9th for STEM-friendliness, it ranked 81st for quality of life and 55th for professional opportunities.
It was Austin that nabbed the top spot, with the highest ranking for professional opportunities, and placing 16th and 14th for STEM-friendliness and quality of life, respectively. Dell Technologies, headquartered in Round Rock since 1996, remains a major provider of employment. Add to this a vibrant start-up scene, an abundance of tech roles with high salaries on offer, and the proximity of top engineering education institutions.
West-coast tech hub Seattle follows with its high volume of tech jobs, and the fact that 7.5% of its GDP stems from R&D, one of the highest rates in the country.
And in third place, it's Atlanta for its high median wages (over $105k a year), and its engineering education opportunities, for example at Atlanta Sandy Springs. The Georgia city also ranked well for singles, and recreation.
Rated the worst
The lowest scoring areas for STEM workers were Indianapolis, Baton Rouge, Bridgeport, Greensboro, Cape Coral, Memphis, Oxnard, North Port, Augusta, Little Rock, and Jackson.
Both Little Rock and Indianapolis had some of the lowest employment growth in STEM, while the former was also among the lowest of median wage growth for STEM workers.
STEM career advice
Helpfully, the research also includes advice for finding a good STEM job. It advocates for attending a quality university with a robust STEM offering, then moving to a city that ranks well for STEM opportunities, but to balance your decision with quality of living considerations. It also advises to look for remote roles.
Beyond these basics, it recommends networking by attending conferences and engaging in online communities, developing strong communication skills and diversifying your skillset to include project management, teamwork, and problem-solving.
Inspired to find a new STEM role? The TechSpot Job Board is the perfect place to start to search as you can search by country, state or city location, and there's also a dropdown option for "Remote USA." It features thousands of openings in companies actively hiring right now, including these three.
Zendesk
It's hard to miss Zendesk. The SaaS customer service platform is used by the world's leading brands for their help desks, email marketing, live chat, and customer engagement.
Recently it's been hiring into a number of remote positions, such as Technical Architect, Principal Value Architect, Cloud Security Architect and Business Analyst, as well as a number of Account Executive roles. View job specs here.
Salesforce
Salesforce is always hiring, and the CRM software company hires all over the U.S., including many of the top ten areas for STEM workers. So if you're lucky enough to live in San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Atlanta or Boston already, consider its available roles.
Recently advertised roles include Technical Support Engineer, Principal Technical Program Manager, IT Product Management, Risk Operations Manager and AMTS Software Engineer. Take a look here.
ByteDance
From TikTok and Helo to platforms specific to the Chinese market, ByteDance has a suite of over a dozen products that are always evolving. The company hires regularly in Seattle, San Jose and Boston, as well as New York and San Diego for all levels, from graduate and intern to leads and directors.
Jobs recently on offer include Software Engineer - Database MySQL, Technology Lead Manager SRE, Research Scientist Intern and Site Reliability Engineer Graduate. Check out ByteDance jobs here.