Travel the world and get a paycheque: The allure of a results-only workplace

What are the legal implications of this? Technically, this would mean this guy's employer is now employing someone in France (or Germany, Netherlands or Spain which are mentioned later). From the employee's perspective as well, they are almost certainly violating that country's laws if they're on a normal tourism visa.

Remote work seems to be an area where laws (in most or all western countries, as far as I can tell) have not kept up. In the above example, you've got a Canadian remotely working for a Canadian company, but living in a foreign country and spending his money there. Assuming he's using a tourism visa like most would be doing in this position, he's breaking the law but this kind of activity is nothing but beneficial to the foreign country, since he is spending money in the local economy, not competing in the local labor market and not drawing any welfare benefits.

Even letting the team estimate stories then assigning them randomly is difficult, some members are more skilled than others. What Jim could do in an hour will take Bill a week.

One thought would be to track everyone's velocity as an individual all the time and ensure all stories are small, like under a few hours. Then you'd have a small enough cycle that it should be possible to get a lot more accurate with estimating and making sure people produce similarly.