[sandover]

Agree! In my experience successful remote work is associated with 2 things:

1. extremely well defined problem domains

2. incrementalism

For lots of engineers, those 2 points describe their job. Lots of (incremental) value is created that way.

But I'd argue that the larger gains accrue to those companies -- or those cities -- where work is being done in non-well-defined problem domains. And not incrementally, but by big leaps, experiments, and messy failures.

In fact, you could go farther and argue that in a competitive landscape, companies will quickly match each other in their performance in well-defined problem spaces, and the only way to actually compete at the margins is in problem areas that are, by definition, newer and not well defined.