[fecak]

It's interesting how many commenters read "remote" as "contract" or even "overseas". There are lots of developers outside of SF, NYC, Chicago, etc. that would relish the opportunity to still live their suburban/rural lifestyle and avoid a lengthy commute.

One advantage for companies in big cities is they can usually hire these remote employees at a discount. It can get a bit hairy when two remote employees doing the same job are paid differently, but that is already the case in many situations.

The other obvious advantage is that companies that hire remote employees have an almost unlimited candidate pool. Even if a company chose to limit hires to their own country, the only group they cannot hire would be candidates unwilling to work remotely. Based on my discussions with thousands of programmers over the years, I'd suspect this is a very small group.