Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

Wow. That's a statistic that doesn't get reported nearly enough. It puts an entirely different spin on the unemployment rate.

I would love to do more remote work, but then I hear horror stories about people having problems not being around people. Feelings of isolation set in after a couple of months, and people end up going to a gig where they are around people. To those doing remote work, is this common?

Posting another thought here.

I have a suspicion that there's enough people in the SF area (and a couple of the the other "big" markets) that will actively fight against telecommuting, specifically because it will lower wages in those areas.

As someone else posted, yes, I understand the value of a team being in the same room. But that value comes at a premium price, and it's one which may not always be worth paying. However, given the boom/busy/buyout cycle in the bay area (as an example), enough of the same workers can move from company to company as the companies are merged, bought out, or close, that this keeps the talent supply close enough to what is needed to make it harder to embrace telecommuting. You just need a few more people to fill in a few gaps, right? They need to be on site, or they're not a 'team player', or just not serious about their career in tech if they don't want to move to the valley! (have heard this before).

If the majority of companies out in SF set themselves up to embrace telecommuting, that would mean it would be easier to fill that next position with someone from Idaho, Kansas or Utah. That would mean the company could pay a lower wage. Why would the culture of startup workers want to embrace something that will end up driving down their salaries?

I have telecommuted for several gigs and positions. The most difficult situation to deal with is when most of the rest of the company doesn't telecommute, so everyone is not in the habit of cluing you in to what's going on. You may have all the tools required to establish and maintain decent communications, but they often don't bother to adopt any of it for their end. I even remote-developed for a large networking company with enormous communications facilities designed to solve problems like that -- but they had me fly over to headquarters all the time instead.

I have failed to understand why someone in India can do my job, but telecommuting is still frowned upon.