> Nah, I bet language barriers and substantial time zone difference will keep most companies out of that mix. You'd need to change the company a bit more to accommodate that.

I'm speaking from direct experience managing mixed teams of US-based and international remote employees.

Language barrier is not an issue. Most of the top international developers became experts by consuming years of English documentation, tech news, and discussion.

Time zones are the biggest hurdle, but once you get into the flow of an asynchronous routine it's much easier than you expect. In my experience, WFH tech employees like to push workflows toward being asynchronous anyway.

>Most of the top international developers became experts by consuming years of English documentation, tech news, and discussion.

Sure for top international developers who are fluent in English.

But top international developers who are very fluent in English aren't cheap.

In my experience communication and language skills are even more important in remote work, and the vast majority of cheap international developers do not have those skills in English.

I would agree - I managed a team that was mostly Europe and US. Everyone was roughly on par in terms of pay and capabilities and the tz differences were actually advantages. the overlap allowed us to essentially double what could be done in a day. We also had a lot of wfh.. my only issue was I had to keep reminding people they couldn’t check out in meetings. I had one guy who would take calls during meetings and never had a clue what we were talking about. Pretty much everyone did email during meetings... but that’s not just a wfh problem— I had to ask plenty of people in the office to leave their laptops out of meetings. It took awhile but eventually folks paid attention. Personally I’ve worked at least half of my twenty years from home or remote office. I really enjoy being able to mix and match and be strategic with my time.

Language may not be an issue but comprehension is a huge problem.

Language barriers aren't relevant when the country you're outsourcing to has the same primary language. TZ differences are a non-issue for distributed companies already using JIRA and Slack for everything. Those two things would only even be a concern for the tiniest minority of companies.

I'm a software engineer based in Brisbane, Australia, I've worked for two US-based startups who were specifically growing their offices in Australia because it's cheaper to hire for the same roles here than in the US.