Money: it's my understanding (I might be wrong) that remote workers (dev or not) are less expansive to a company than on site ones. Mainly because the less people you have on site, the less "site" you need... "site" being the premises, the hardware for it, etc... which all costs a bunch of money.
Convenience: a remote worker can be, on average, further away of the company's site than the typical on site worker who needs to go there every day, so by accepting any worker remotely (entry level or otherwise) they have more candidates for the job.
Also, the year is 2018, working remotely is fashionable and modern, giving this opportunity to your employees might also be a way to be more attractive than the competition.
Once again, these are just my 2 cents, I'm not an expert on the matter.
I'm no company owner but my two guesses would be:
Also, the year is 2018, working remotely is fashionable and modern, giving this opportunity to your employees might also be a way to be more attractive than the competition.
Once again, these are just my 2 cents, I'm not an expert on the matter.
We've done the entry-level remote thing and would favor in person for this kind of role in the future for most of the reasons you've outlined.
However, we'd also do the remote thing again. We learned a lot about the pitfalls and would approach it with more awareness this time.