How much more did GitHub users in the U.S. work in 2020?

Seven-day average of the percent difference in daily observed versus predicted activity on GitHub. in their paper.

It’s worth noting that this data represents a small — and generally privileged — share of the workforce. GitHub is often used by software developers who typically experience high salaries, job security and had work-from-home options available to them throughout the pandemic.

But 2022 may be the year that developers and other remote workers return to offices. Despite the omicron variant currently sweeping through the Bay Area, some medical experts posit that the virus will largely be managed at some point this year, thanks to widespread vaccination and immunity.

But companies that delayed return-to-office plans because of omicron have yet to announce new return dates. Some have even announced permanent remote work options. This suggests the shifting work schedule found in McDermott’s research may persist even after the “end” of the pandemic.

For you data nerds who are curious about the research methodology: Analyzing realtime data like GitHub activity is challenging due to the fluidity in the number of users that generate data points. For this study, the researchers needed to control for the increase in GitHub users over time when calculating and comparing activity levels. To deal with this issue, they trained a time-series model on historical activity (2017-19) and had the model simulate a counterfactual for 2020. In other words, if historical patterns persisted, what would we have expected 2020 activity levels to be? That’s how the researchers produced the “predicted” numbers, which they then compared to the actual data to understand the difference.