I suppose it is a cultural thing, and American or Western European firms simply expected people to come into the office. I was active in the Eastern European/former USSR backpacking and travel-as-lifestyle community, and eventually quite a few of my peers with programming skills managed to get remote positions already in the first decade of the new millennium. Some companies in the region didn't care whether the work got done from a beach in India or a resort town in the Andes, as long as it got done.

This was truly transformative for some Eastern European programmers' lives. Doing the work from a developing country where you could get by on 5-10€/day, but making a relatively elite salary, allowed them to begin investing in real estate, which has brought great prosperity and security.