I for example cannot leave Perth, Australia. I'm doing the startup boogie from here. And there aren't many dance partners.
So the dynamics of hiring in Silicon Valley, Seattle and New York hold about as much validity for me as the far side of the moon.
(Wherein I partially sink my own argument).
I think it would be great if there were some better tools for tracking and working with remote hackers. I think the virtual office is so close to becoming a reality.
I've been freelancing lately.
There are probably thousands of such tools. Pretty much every freelancer ever has cobbled one together and some substantial fraction have gone on to release it.
Pivotal Tracker not your style? Try WorkflowMax. Or briefcase. Or IMS Service Track. Or SmartBiller. Or Jobsheet. Or ProWorkflow. Or TriggerApp. Or ...
The market is hot.... Assuming you live in SF or NYC. It's pretty dry - even for tech - if you live somewhere else. (just look on github jobs and count the number of jobs accepting remote workers)
I'm not sure better tools would solve the problem. Between web based trackers/document collaborators/Skype/Google Hangouts, it feels like we have most of the tools we need (except maybe a good whiteboard tool).
There are biases against remote work (in most cases). In some cases it might be, "oh, we neeeeeed high Bandwidth of seeing people in same room" (maybe, maybe not). In some cases it might boil down to someone equating "seeing butts in chairs" with "working". Or, "we've always been in one room, why change?"
The tools are there: Web based bug trackers, email, Skype/Hangouts, pairing via screen/tmux (granted pairing is an market ripe for even better tools), GitHub... And yes it's some effort to use these tools, but it's a pretty low barrier.
I think the virtual office will become a reality once people overcome their bias... Which is a human problem, not a problem we can solve with Mr Turing's Machine.
While I primarily do security rather that software, in Australia the approach would be "Are you interested in contract work for Reputable Government Agency / Mining Company / Bank?" while in Silicon Valley is "Hot new VC funded startup looking for a rockstar to secure the social local cloud!".
I'm really enjoying the difference.
Until certain developments in my life made it an impossibility, I was thinking of moving to New York. Because it's the most unalike[1] English-speaking place with a vibrant startup scene I could think of to live in.
[1] unalike from Darwin. Even Perth is a megapolis compared to that beautiful flyspeck.
I never considered it before, but this is another benefit of startup hubs for the best startups: it's easier for people to leave their employers to come work for you. Of course you die by that same sword when you get sufficiently big, but that's a good problem to have.