[jasode]

>Remote does not necessarily imply international.

It does in Paul Graham's essay and OP's response to it. Again, we're losing sight of the thread's discussion. (Please read PG's essay that started this.)

PG's essay was about H1-B visas (recruiting foreign talent into the USA) and the OP (MA.TT) said the answer was remote workers. This means international remote workers that are 6+ to 12+ hours ahead in timezones.

We're not talking about hiring remote workers in Maine and Rhode Island to work as a distributed team for California companies. We're talking about remote workers in far off timezones like France, Japan, Australia, etc. I know of zero examples where the type of company that Y-Combinator likes to fund (e.g. billion-dollar ideas) was built with remote workers to the extent that the H1-B conversation can be rendered a moot point.

[YuriNiyazov]

Actually, we are talking about both. YC and PG are very strongly pro "everyone in the same office", so it's not that those workers could come to US and then live in Maine. No, they will come to US and live in SF or NYC areas.

[zedpm]

I read PG's original essay and ma.tt's, and while I agree that PG is talking explicitly about international, I disagree that ma.tt is doing the same, to the exclusion of domestic remote workers. He writes "If 95% of great programmers aren’t in the US, and an even higher percentage not in the Bay Area, set up your company to take advantage of that fact as a strength, not a weakness." That comment about "not in the Bay Area" is indeed explicitly pointing to US developers outside SF.