[oldandboring]

Money talks. If I'm paying $150k for a US-based engineer and I'm getting poor output as a result of them working remotely, the downside is considerable and I have a strong incentive to improve their output, especially since I can, assuming they are located near an office. If I'm paying $40k for an off/near-shore engineer, the financial downside is lower, and besides what can I really do about it since they don't live near an office?

All caveats apply, of course. It kinda depends on how bad it is with each worker.

Worth mentioning, by the way, that many professional off/near-shoring agencies have offices that the workers can work from -- often a necessity if home internet is not available or stable in their countries. So while these workers remain remote to YOU, they're presumably getting the benefit of being without the distraction of home, and the opportunity to collaborate and build relationships with colleagues in-person.

[bediger4000]

Money doesn't always talk. Me (programmer) a sysadmin and a DBA ran a Visa level 1 merchant's credit card processing for 2 years. The last year we had zero downtime outside of scheduled maintenance windows. The company offshored my job ("we can pay 3-4 people in Bangalore with your salary"). The next year they had lots of downtime, probably more than enough to pay my salary. I expect offshoring was considered a success, because that company has outsourced and offshores everything but lawyers and C-levels. Now, they can no longer offer static IP addresses to customers, and haven't managed to do IPv6.

[LunaSea]

Research mostly seems to indicate that remote work increases productivity.