Github also had real trouble with their cash flows. MS bought the popularity and the current and future projects that are hosted there (probably overpaid for all that).

Now - why remoting would work better for the company (off the top of my head): 1. next to zero office-space rental costs 2. you're going shopping for talent in the whole world and you can hire regardless of visas, eligibility, etc. I.e. you hire better talent, for less money (they don't need to pay outrageous rents for SF/London/Munich/Dublin/whatever) 3. You get happier employees (they don't get to see their families once every six m onths or so) 4. You get easier on-calls schedules 24/7/365 if you get a few ppl on different timezones 5. You get diversity from day 0 and local eyes in almost all markets that you care to sell anything 6. You _have_ to document more and better since you _have_ to work with tickets 7. You make your meetings worthwhile because your time matters (and you're not valued or paid according to "chair-time" that can be filled with boring nonsense meetings so that you can coast through the day)

There's a bunch of other advantages in other areas (ecology, general economy, tech, etc) but since the focus is on what's in it for the company I won't go into these.