Why people think work from home and work from anywhere are same?

Question

I am building a site for fully location independent jobs. All jobs on my site are work from anywhere. I started this project after seeing all the popular remote job boards are filled with jobs that have some sort of location restriction. Job seekers can't apply from other countries/ can't move to a different country while working.There are reasons for the restrictions: tax implications, local laws, etc. These jobs are essentially work from home jobs. So, I built a site exclusively for work from anywhere jobs.The most common feedback I received from day one is: how is this different from remoteok or weworkremotely? Further conversations revealed me that they don't distinguish the difference between work from home and work from anywhere. In their opinion, remote means you can work from anywhere. But in reality most remote jobs are restricted to a location.Why is this? how in 2022 people overlook this? Am I missing anything?

warrenm · Accepted Answer

Work from "anywhere" can be problematic because of timing, data egress/storage laws, etc
If I work for a US company that does DoD contracting, for example, I can't work "from" Belarus
I could work anywhere in the US
Some companies have national, state, or local incentives to hire "local" (or "domestic") ... even if those workers are remote, because they're supposed to be helping the "local" economy (be it Macon GA, Iceland, Hawaii, etc)
There may be other concerns about having workers connecting "from anywhere" due to non-competes, same-named-but-different businesses in those other locations, tax regulations, etc

rmk · Answer

Work from Anywhere may be a nightmare in terms of tax compliance and labor laws for smaller companies. That's one reason smaller companies have location restrictions. Larger companies have well-established processes and payroll systems to be able to handle that, not to mention the IT infrastructure.

duped · Answer

I think you answered your own question. Work from "anywhere" isn't really thing without breaking some tax laws in most countries. So it's not confusion so much as you're looking at a very small subset of legally grey behavior within the grander scheme of remote work, which like all things assumes that people have a fixed address and move rarely.

johncoltrane · Answer

"Remote work" has always existed in one form or another for some of us but, for the majority, it all started a couple of years ago as "not work at work". For better or worse, that is the new colloquial meaning of "remote work".