I'll try to answer the question from my perspective as the CEO of GitLab with 650 people in 50 countries and shared offices.
First of all as an industry we haven't agreed on a term. Remote first or remote friendly are used by companies that do have a headquarter but are open to remote work like Stripe. Since remote can have a negative connotation some companies like Wordpress like distributed but that is also used by companies that have offices in multiple locations. At GitLab we prefer to use all remote https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/
The three biggest companies as far as I know are Wordpress, InVision, and GitLab. Wordpress and InVision both have around 1000 people while we're 45% smaller. I've heard that InVision has people work east coast hours but that doesn't show in their job listings.
I think remote will become much more popular. It saves people commuting time and gives them more flexibility to care for family, go to the gym at a convenient time, travel more, and deal with sick children. For the company you are able to hire outside of competitive metro areas and you save money by that https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ and on office costs.
It is early days for remote and it is still viewed as a risk by potential investors. But with tools like Zoom and better tools for asynchronous collaboration like InVision and GitLab I think it will become popular rapidly. Because you have to adjust you communication https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/ I think new startups will be all remote while existing companies will find it much harder to change.
First of all as an industry we haven't agreed on a term. Remote first or remote friendly are used by companies that do have a headquarter but are open to remote work like Stripe. Since remote can have a negative connotation some companies like Wordpress like distributed but that is also used by companies that have offices in multiple locations. At GitLab we prefer to use all remote https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/
The three biggest companies as far as I know are Wordpress, InVision, and GitLab. Wordpress and InVision both have around 1000 people while we're 45% smaller. I've heard that InVision has people work east coast hours but that doesn't show in their job listings.
I think remote will become much more popular. It saves people commuting time and gives them more flexibility to care for family, go to the gym at a convenient time, travel more, and deal with sick children. For the company you are able to hire outside of competitive metro areas and you save money by that https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ and on office costs.
It is early days for remote and it is still viewed as a risk by potential investors. But with tools like Zoom and better tools for asynchronous collaboration like InVision and GitLab I think it will become popular rapidly. Because you have to adjust you communication https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/ I think new startups will be all remote while existing companies will find it much harder to change.