yeah, i'm sure a bunch of highly paid software engineers swooping in to deprived communities and inflating property prices would go down well with the locals...

If you incentivize remote work, those workers may be spread out enough across communities that they wouldn't necessarily impact the overall housing market in any one community.

Sounds like you're applying a lot of quite American assumptions to rural Wales, to be honest.

In general, rural areas and small towns are not automatically deprived (though they can be), they are quite happy with attracting more well-paid jobs into the community to support the local economy, and they tend not to suffer from chronic shortages of accommodation like the big cities do.

Speaking for my cousins who live in one of these towns, the rich English are moving in, buying up swaths of land that was farmable or whatever, and using it for private vacation homes that they don't use that much. They ship things in rather than buy local. They don't try to speak the language. The list of complaints goes on and on.

That's not the same thing as a few more software developers living full time in the town, in fairness. More remote workers would be akin to having a few extra GPs or solicitors around the place, doing local-person stuff like going to the pub or buying groceries and school uniforms for their kids.

I do sympathise with your cousins though. The few Irish-speaking regions left in the country are constantly facing similar challenges.

> Sounds like you're applying a lot of quite American assumptions to rural Wales, to be honest.

I'm British, I know Wales pretty well. Rural north Wales is pretty deprived

I'm guilty of what I thought I was rebutting. Apologies for my presumptuousness. I do still think that a handful of software developers spread across several smallish towns would be no bad thing though.