The triplebyte application is remote (or was when I did it in ~2015), but the jobs they match you with are not. As the author confirms elsewhere in this thread, they need a critical mass of employers and candidates before the process is effective for both parties.

Re the SEO play idea and jumping straight to the assumption of deception, I've found it useful in life to switch my mental model away from "I don't understand, what's wrong with you?" towards "I don't understand, what's wrong with me?"

What aspect of the process requires a non-remote component?

I'm unfamiliar with TripleByte, but it seems like they're matching online candidates with jobs, and that looks something that should be doable online. Other companies in this space are fully online and are recruiting for employers everywhere.

> What aspect of the process requires a non-remote component?

For "job placement" in the abstract, nothing. I'm sure they could do the whole thing over skype were all parties so inclined.

In practice, this seems not to be what their company and customers are interested in. They do in-person onsites, for in-person roles. They're chasing a successful business with an operational scope that pleases their customers, not a locational-egalitarian remote utopia, so I don't fault them for only supporting a subset of work types. They do what works for them, and don't owe the market total coverage.

> Re the SEO play idea and jumping straight to the assumption of deception

I wasn't accusing them of doing something wrong. I don't consider SEO to be deception and see no problem with a company doing something like this purely for SEO.

Like Taxi apps or food delivery apps, they need multiple types of users on the platform in new locations at the same time to provide reasonable user experience.