The theory that remote working is advantageous has the unstated premise that the thing being optimized for is wealth. In that theory, it makes sense to use methods that let people get their jobs done with minimum cost and distraction.
In reality, money is a weaker motive than power. When workers are on site, particularly in an open plan office, the boss's brain receives reminders every hour of every day that he is wielding power over underlings. That's not what everyone cares about most - but it's the people who do care about that, who become bosses in the first place.
(In the West, it's customary to maintain the fiction that it's about money. Apparently in places like Japan and South Korea, they don't bother with that fiction; you can spend your time in the office browsing Hacker News if you like, but if your boss is in the office seventy hours a week, you've got to be there eighty hours a week.)
As for what to do about it, as I see it the main strategies, in increasing order of difficulty and potential value, are:
1. Remember that remote work is not sensitive to location, and search the whole world for remote working jobs.
2. Become a contractor and look for clients who want goods and services rather than bosses who want underlings.
3. Start your own company and try to fix the problem for other people as well as yourself.
My very first employer didn't have a consistent quantity of work for me to do and often made me sit in the office with just a chair and not even a desk.
I proposed to the manager that I would rather be on call (even unpaid) in the library next-door than sit in the office paid with nothing to do.
The manager agreed that there was nothing for me to do and agreed that there was nothing wrong with what I was proposing in principle, but it was necessary for me to sit in the office during working hours. There were exactly zero occasions when I was urgently required to be there.
This comment, about power being a stronger motivation for money, reminded me of that situation and put it into perspective: thanks.
My Dad worked for Marconi in Liverpool fixing radar and radios for ships late fifties and early 60s before they became a large multi-national. Certain kinds of staff were not always needed in the workshop e.g. radio officers signing off on repairs.
They hung out in a Dock Road pub. The techies wired up a loudspeaker to the pub (not radio, I suspect they hacked the Reddifusion cable radio) and called the staff when needed. I was quite impressed as a small boy (and, no, we as a country were not big on efficiency in those days).
There a few classics like this from the 70's when the unions had immense power in the UK and there was lots of over employment in what was then public companies. Examples I remember were a false wall in the back of a British Steel factory which was setup with rows of bunk beds on the quiet so that only 1 in 3 had to do any work. The rest were paid to sleep. Also had employees on the books with the rather blatant names of D. Duck and M. Mouse.
The chaps in the pub could be sailing with a ship as relief radio officer at a moment's notice so not quite the bunk bed thing.
Iain Sinclair has written about Trueman's Brewery round that time as well.
You won't agree with this but: is paying people to sleep in bunks any worse than subsidising low paid jobs using the benefit system as we do now? Typical commercial rents £600 to £750 a month and minimum wage £6.50 per hour.
If you are a boss looking to play power games then I can think of better subjects than developers - there is a reason that managing developers is equated with herding cats.
More seriously I think a lot of the reluctance to hire remote workers revolves around communication. Managing developers requires great communication which is very hard to do remotely. Of course on the positive side if you are willing to make the effort there are some really, really good European developers out there who want to work remotely.
"When workers are on site, particularly in an open plan office, the boss's brain receives reminders every hour of every day that he is wielding power over underlings."
Teaching: you have to trust people. You can't be the 'pit boss'. Might be why I stayed in teaching I suppose - management has to support performance, not wield power.
In reality, money is a weaker motive than power. When workers are on site, particularly in an open plan office, the boss's brain receives reminders every hour of every day that he is wielding power over underlings. That's not what everyone cares about most - but it's the people who do care about that, who become bosses in the first place.
(In the West, it's customary to maintain the fiction that it's about money. Apparently in places like Japan and South Korea, they don't bother with that fiction; you can spend your time in the office browsing Hacker News if you like, but if your boss is in the office seventy hours a week, you've got to be there eighty hours a week.)
As for what to do about it, as I see it the main strategies, in increasing order of difficulty and potential value, are:
1. Remember that remote work is not sensitive to location, and search the whole world for remote working jobs.
2. Become a contractor and look for clients who want goods and services rather than bosses who want underlings.
3. Start your own company and try to fix the problem for other people as well as yourself.