One of the great things about technology work is that it doesn't really matter where it's performed. You're on the network, with minimum latency, regardless if you're down the hall or on another continent. For employees, working from home -- or from a remote office -- means greater flexibility and reduced stress from commutes. For employers -- and this is extremely important in the IT field -- it means being able to draw from a vast, global pool of talent, with no concerns about relocation. In addition, work could even be handed off from time zone to time zone for more rapid turnarounds.
It is estimated [1]that there are between 18 to 21 million developers across the globe. Of this, only about one million -- or five percent -- are in the United States, so you can see how an employer in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, needs to spread its recruiting and staffing wings.
It's in the best interest for tech-oriented employers, then, to be open to this global pool of talent. There are a number of companies leading the way, actively hiring globally distributed tech workforces. Glassdoor recently published[2] a list of leading companies that encourage remote work, which includes some prominent tech companies, and Remotive has been compiling[3] a comprehensive list of more than 2,500 companies of all sizes that hire remote IT workers.
Survey data from Stack Overflow, analyzed[4] by Itoro Ikon, finds that out of almost 89,000 developers participating in its most recent survey, 45% work remotely at least part of the time, and 10% indicated they are full-time remote workers. A majority of remote workers, 58%, are regular full-time employees.