Or it could just be that most people aren't in your sort of 'maximise house size' game.

I've done remote work, and you know what?

I'd rather live in a small flat in London than have a big old house in the North because everything is in London. It's _the_ city in the UK.

If that ever changes (I sincerely doubt it will primarily because essentially all of the wealth is there) it'll probably take multiple generations.

> Especially when they then offshore bits of the company to India or Eastern/Southern Europe requiring contracted staff to use a VPN.

But that's the point, isn't it? If you're giving up on locality, you might as well hire someone cheap. The fact that they can commute into the office is one of the things keeping the salaries of UK workers higher.

In other words, be careful with what you wish for, you just might get it.

Offshore does not equal cheaper. Often what you think you save in salary, you spend in communication overheads.

What communication overhead, if you've already said you are in favor of telecommuting?

Communicating across differences in language, culture and just simple local knowledge - in other words, considerable overhead.

True for offshoring to (for example) India, but almost negligible for offshoring to many parts of Europe.

There is still an accountability problem. It's very common for Indian IT contractors to tell you that they assign their best employees to your project and then in reality fill the seat with some intern or trainee that hasn't even finished his first project.

So don't use a contractor. Open an Indian office and hire people directly.

I suppose what I'm arguing for is keeping onshore, but allowing people to telecommute. They all speak the same language and understanding. The company doesn't lose anything, probably saves a great deal in real estate and building insurance.

Yeah, but why would they do that, if balfirevic is right (and I think he is)? Once everyone is telecommuting, the question becomes: do I want to pay a 50%-80% premium to get a native speaker, instead of someone who speaks it quite well and might have even worked previously in the UK?

I don't know, but there is often quality of work comes into question.

Businesses who look to offshore expect it to be cheap, they often find that cheap doesn't mean good. Good offshore may cost a similar amount to good onshore. Offshore may be be unsocial hours for local time.

There's also often a cost of the business decision makers taking a jolly trip to the offshore location to see their offices (no idea why this is needed), if telecommuting doesn't work well enough to trust the remote office, why go there?

There's a push to make less expensive northern cities (Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool) appealing for tech. London still has (and will do for the foreseeable future) the lion's share, but there plenty of good tech jobs up north.

Same with the Scottish central belt. There are plenty of good jobs up here. Part of the reason for the London centricness is that relatively few people realise just how many good jobs there are outside of London.

All the jobs are a few clicks away from being found. London probably offers quite a few amenities that people want, even though they hate many aspects of it. One of the crucial amenities a big city provides is security that if you lose an income stream, you will be able to get another easily.

How much are people willing to pay for that?

If you're a software engineer that security exists in every major city. Plus the cost of living to salary ratio is so much better that it's far easier to save an emergency fund.

Why though, I don't see what the appeal is with London. There's bits in the Thames Valley, but not much.