Early experimental and analytical results for short-pulse, high intensity laser–target scenarios have claimed the existence of significant surface currents along the target edge due to hot electron confinement by electromagnetic surface fields. However, more recent fully integrated-explicit and hybrid-implicit particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have revealed that surface confinement is only a minor effect. This discrepancy can be attributed to an observational effect; only a small fraction of electrons escape and they may not represent the bulk distribution. PIC simulations reveal that enhanced surface emission is largely dependent on target geometry and has only a minor dependence on laser incidence angle and/or the angular distribution of the hot electron birth distribution. Furthermore, the escape distribution appears to differ from the initial birth distribution primarily at low energies and is higher in temperature, which is significant for the interpretation of experimental measurements.