If you run a tech company and only think about hiring people locally you're crazy.
Why hire only locally when you can draw from talent anywhere in your country, in fact, anywhere in the world. Likely at a much lower cost for the same level of talent. Plus you have the advantages of your team not needing to travel.
Working together in the same office is a 20th century model of doing business, and I'm surprised that many technology companies are not open to a more distributed model.
A more important question is: What needs to be done from an office versus a distributed team?
From an office you will probably want:
Core executive team members (in a larger company, but not necessary in a small company, all team members can be distributed)
Local based sales people (if you are doing one-on-one presentations selling to local businesses)
Plus certain types of businesses do need an office
I agree with you, but in practice I've seen that even if a company wants to go distributed, they lack the knowledge on how to make the model actually work for them.
They resort to using the exact same process with more conference calls and emails. That clearly doesn't work as you miss many subtle communication queues.
If you run a tech company and only think about hiring people locally you're crazy.
Why hire only locally when you can draw from talent anywhere in your country, in fact, anywhere in the world. Likely at a much lower cost for the same level of talent. Plus you have the advantages of your team not needing to travel.
Working together in the same office is a 20th century model of doing business, and I'm surprised that many technology companies are not open to a more distributed model.
A more important question is: What needs to be done from an office versus a distributed team?
From an office you will probably want: Core executive team members (in a larger company, but not necessary in a small company, all team members can be distributed) Local based sales people (if you are doing one-on-one presentations selling to local businesses) Plus certain types of businesses do need an office