I'm a recent hire for one of the companies on that list. It seems to me that by allowing your company to hire from a much larger pool of candidates allows you to be more selective for talent. The amount of talent that I'm exposed to is incredible, something I'd never be able to experience in my own city.

There's a whole slew of unfamiliar problems that come with remote work - and I believe that these companies are pioneering something that will become the norm one day. Work life balance is a serious problem, as well as relationship building. It seems to me that distributed companies have a hard cap on size before the disadvantages of remote become too cumbersome. These problems require creative solutions, and it's awesome to be able to contribute to it. However, it's difficult for me to identify which problems are caused by the remote-first culture, and which problems can just be attributed to the company itself.