At a lot of companies, it's hard to telecommute unless you get your foot in the door by working with them for a while and becoming invaluable, giving you enough

At a lot of companies, it's hard to telecommute unless you get your foot in the door by working with them for a while and becoming invaluable, giving you enough leverage to demand it in the next time you negotiate employment terms. This is a real shame, since millions of people live in flyover states, and some of them are probably talented programmers who can't or won't move to tech hubs for one reason or another. (I'm one of them.) It's a missed opportunity for tech companies, and it damages the social and political fabric of our society by isolating the wealth being created by the technology industry to a few big cities.