From Matt Mullenweg, responding to Paul Graham’s post:
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.
It’s always easy to oversimplify this issue, but there’s good points on both sides here, plus the Hacker News discussion is useful reading.
Personality types (eg introvert versus extrovert) is a key item I see missing in most discussions on the topic, since people will usually (unconsciously) argue from their own personality type’s perspective. But company culture is a complex matter and if it’s not set up for remote working it takes a ton of work to change – that would the ‘set up your company’ bit in Matt’s quote above.
Speaking personally, my company is all remote workers (some full-time, some part-time) and (although only small) it’s taken a lot of work to get it working soothly. The processes and systems are much different to those used in my previous roles working alongside colleagues.
