I've been a remote worker for over four years, and my experience is this statement is partially true. With a laptop and wifi connection, I can work from any location where I am most productive. Spending every day in the same spare bedroom kills creativity, and a laptop can go anywhere that spurs it.

It saves money if you cast off things you don't need, such as an extra car (my wife and I now car share), business casual clothing, eating out, &c, and if you live somewhere cheap. I live somewhere cheap (Louisiana), so I have a house with a couple of spare bedrooms from which to work.

Yes, having a dedicated working space is very important. I think when you have people that work remote and cover their own working environment costs it is cheaper for the company on the whole.

But if the company is assisting remote work, e.g. paying for coworking space with an allowance that is probably still cheaper. Consider a team of 10... Even at a $200 / mo allowance for coworking that it still only 20~30% of what it would cost per month for a decent space in most major cities and there's no long term commitment.

So I think when you scale it out for small to medium teams it is cheaper and would be cheaper for a lot of startups that weren't already in a shared space.

Yep.

Even if every employee worked in their own coworking space, the advantage is that they can choose one within walking distance of their front door.

No-one needs to cause carnage to their family life if they are forced to change jobs multiple times. The idea that to find a job, you have to relocate and separate your children from their friends, clubs and schooling is quite horrifying really.

To an extent, but at a pinch I can work on the sofa with a laptop. Peace and quiet are really the most important things - I find it difficult to do "deep" work in a crowded cafe, although I can do some trivial stuff like tidying up code, answering emails and so on.

Depending on your locale and situation, you might get tax breaks and/or company subsidies for a home office and equipment as well.

But then all your programmers have private offices, which has been thoroughly established as dramatically important to productivity, as well as a bargaining chip in recruiting the best people.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper... (Kind of old, but still applicable.)

Supplying an allowance to rent somewhere with a good workspace or set up an office is still mostly cheaper than renting an inner-city space with private offices... and then you don't have issues with VCs thinking you're burning their money unnecessarily.

Does Microsoft have the best people? Or does massive pay and moonshot projects outweigh a private office for most of the best?

That really depends on the time period and specific team within Microsoft. Working on Excel in the mid-90s (where Joel worked as a PM) is a significantly different experience than being on the windows installer team today.