US companies figured out the cheap-enough way to hire remote talent decades ago. And they found that those remote employees come with their own set of problems,

US companies figured out the cheap-enough way to hire remote talent decades ago. And they found that those remote employees come with their own set of problems, leading to offshore outsourcing firms managing the remote talent locally. So you don't see hundreds of thousands of remote non-US programmers working for US companies. Instead you see a small number of large outsourcing firms and agencies hiring and managing people locally and contracting back to US firms. They can continue to pay local salaries because demand for decent jobs in places like Bengaluru or Dhaka, and the difficulty of getting a visa and work permit and relocating to the USA, means those remote employees will have to settle for salaries far below what people doing the same work get in the US. US companies offshore mainly to reduce overall labor costs, in other words. That works if the employer can reduce the work and work product to well-defined tasks that they can farm out to just anyone. It doesn't work for high-end creative work that requires specialized knowledge or business domain expertise.