Like a lot of these discussions, there are some strong opinions but clearly the answer is, "it depends". Only need 1 or 2 devs? You are more likely to find the

Like a lot of these discussions, there are some strong opinions but clearly the answer is, "it depends". Only need 1 or 2 devs? You are more likely to find them locally and this makes it easier for you with tax/legal etc. Local people are more likely to be culturally closer to you which makes both recruitment and performance management easier. There are no time-zones etc. The truth is, after you grow just a little bit bigger, in most countries, there are simply not enough local devs to meet the demand, you have to go remote, probably nationally and ultimately globally. This brings many challenges and in some cases costs a lot in legal/tax/hr costs, depending on whether you are sub-contracting to another EU country or somebody in China. Culturally hard, timezone inefficiency and many other well-know issues. Another big issue is the type of work. If you have a job where you can easily package up tasks and they don't need much management input, you can much more easily farm it out to a managed firm in e.g. the Phillipines. One of my previous companies only went remote because they couldn't find enough people to recruit, it cost them the same amount after expenses per-person in Vietnam as it did in the UK. As to whether it works, if you are naiive and think it is just about money, it is very likely to fail but plenty of companies have global teams and it works just great thanks.