Well, I think, the difference now is that the technology is mature enough to enable distributed work. I work at Mentor Graphics, and altough its embedded softwa

Well, I think, the difference now is that the technology is mature enough to enable distributed work. I work at Mentor Graphics, and altough its embedded software most of my managers work from EU/US timezone and they all work from home. I don't know how people used to manage their issues before jira/github but it certainly has helped remote work. Plus the internet as a whole is penetrating developing countries so the issues of no internet and lag is not there anymore. I can't back this up with data but, I have personally seen a rise in the remote first companies. the first name that comes to mind is Linaro, plus I think red hat also supports remote hires. All the dev ops jobs that I see are remote. So yes the change is a difficult one and it needs a particular mindset on the managers side as well. But I think the threshold to become a remote company is a lot lower now...