I believe we in the software industry have a moral duty to pursue remote, distributed work, as much as possible, for a few reasons:
The software that runs the world should be developed by people living all over the world, not just people who can move to a few cities. To me, this is part of real diversity. We talk about gathering requirements for software. Well, it's easier to do it when the people developing the software are as diverse as possible. Limiting these jobs to people who are willing and able to move to one of the tech hubs is bound to limit some kinds of diversity.
People should be free to live in and support their local communities. I think a lot of the political polarization that has been building up lately, particularly in the US, is between the "elites" in big cities and the "regular people" in the rest of the country. We should try to reduce that gap. Of course, people who find their local community intolerable should be free to move elsewhere.
Remote work, especially when it's primarily text-based, is also more equitable for people with disabilities. Blind people benefit somewhat from the fact that nobody is relying on facial expressions or body language (assuming video calls aren't a routine thing). For people with other kinds of disabilities, the benefits can be far greater. What would you do if a deaf person or a person with a severe speech impediment applied for a job on your on-site team? Well, if you're primarily using text, it's not as big an issue. Sure, we can always accommodate specific people with specific disabilities, but it's better if the normal way of doing things already works for them.
Disclosure: I currently work at Microsoft, on the main Redmond campus. So call me a hypocrite if you like. But I honestly think I'm doing a lot of good where I'm at, since I work on the Windows accessibility team. I do sometimes bring up the subject of remote work with my colleagues. And whenever I move on, I will probably insist that my next job be remote.
The software that runs the world should be developed by people living all over the world, not just people who can move to a few cities. To me, this is part of real diversity. We talk about gathering requirements for software. Well, it's easier to do it when the people developing the software are as diverse as possible. Limiting these jobs to people who are willing and able to move to one of the tech hubs is bound to limit some kinds of diversity.
People should be free to live in and support their local communities. I think a lot of the political polarization that has been building up lately, particularly in the US, is between the "elites" in big cities and the "regular people" in the rest of the country. We should try to reduce that gap. Of course, people who find their local community intolerable should be free to move elsewhere.
Remote work, especially when it's primarily text-based, is also more equitable for people with disabilities. Blind people benefit somewhat from the fact that nobody is relying on facial expressions or body language (assuming video calls aren't a routine thing). For people with other kinds of disabilities, the benefits can be far greater. What would you do if a deaf person or a person with a severe speech impediment applied for a job on your on-site team? Well, if you're primarily using text, it's not as big an issue. Sure, we can always accommodate specific people with specific disabilities, but it's better if the normal way of doing things already works for them.
Disclosure: I currently work at Microsoft, on the main Redmond campus. So call me a hypocrite if you like. But I honestly think I'm doing a lot of good where I'm at, since I work on the Windows accessibility team. I do sometimes bring up the subject of remote work with my colleagues. And whenever I move on, I will probably insist that my next job be remote.