I feel that there is a grain of truth here in
pknerd's words. I don't have a citation, and sure, my story is just another anecdotal data point; but I'd like to add it here anyway and I suspect that there are many others like me.
I've been in software engineering for many many years and have worked for a number of employers in different parts of the world. The upshot of all that experience is that I know, with great clarity, what I want and what I do not want. I _have_ in the past, moved 17,000 km to take up a role but those days are behind me - there are only so many times you can pull off an enormous undertaking like that!
I've worked remotely (on and off) for years and have settled on preferring to stay remote for the remainder of my career. Whilst my life is pretty flexible and _could_ move pretty much anywhere, I have no desire to move near to the location of an employer for on-site work just because they happen to be in a particular location. However, I'm more than happy to put in the effort to visit occasionally, especially when starting a new project or a new team is being assembled.
I'm also practising Geographic Arbitrage which goes hand in hand with remote work and is a significant contributor to my financial survival strategy. Having lived in major world cities with grossly inflated asset bubbles (real estate), I know now that I will never do that again, and continue to actively move in the opposite direction.
The counter risk, of course, is that there are little or no employers situated away from "power house" cities, and that I'd be pooched if the remote work dries up. Fortunately, I've managed to get by so far.
What I genuinely find odd though, is the thought process of companies that are absolutely dead set against remote roles, but happily base their businesses upon large, successful and significant software projects like Linux or Rails or Node.js which are developed by huge distributed teams of remote software engineers living all over the world.
I would say that a job available on site OR remotely will attract more candidates than an on site only.
To share my own experience, I've just bought an apartment and I've been thinking of working in a new company. I will automatically exclude non-remote positions (also the reason why I might leave my current company as the managers can work remotely no question asked but the devs can't...)
Yes, that's a good point that I forgot to mention in my post, Outpox.
Whilst I'm currently enjoying the flexibility of renting, I may well buy a house within the next year or two, and at that point re-location will definitely not be an option. The transaction costs of buying and selling property are eye-watering. Ideally I'd like to buy in an affordable rural or semi-rural area and continue to work remotely.