>What happened to pride or quality control or anything?

Sounds like some dangerous cowboy coding wrongthink you've got going on over there.

> I haven't read about the outcomes, but I've always wondered what could happen if the DC area did the same.

If the central office has any say over the location someone works, you get the phenomenon where the population of less-desirable living locations get to suffer local employees that aren't good enough at their job to be given higher prioritization in choosing their station. And the organization looses good workers they can't accommodate.

Even before AI the human element was being drown out.

The neat internet thing was neat for a while because power hadn't worked out how to exploit it for their own ends. They have now, the genie doesn't go back in the bottle.