I am not sure why would you say that. The company has a big chunk of people working from remote locations all over the world, not only developers but also managers.
The fact that the possibility to work remotely is evaluated based on the candidate experience, the location (eg. cost to the team to meet in person), timezone, and the location of the rest of the team, does not mean hiring locally is a policy. It is completely up to the team with very few exceptions.
I was told that it is indeed company policy to have employees in the office. There are only very few remote workers, and new hires are relocated to the next office location, with very few exceptions. Once there, one can basically forget about working remotely, because telecommuting is "only an exception under special circumstances".
Whoever told you that, it is incorrect information. There are remote workers at all levels of the organization.
You should not confuse that with "every position is open to be hired remote". There are teams that are setup for that, others that are not. Even for the same position, it depends a lot on the candidate.
About telecommuting, we call that home-office and has nothing to do with "remotes". It only applies to people working in office locations (obviously). You can work from home if you have a reason for it (something delivered, big cold but feeling well, sick child, etc.), but it is not like "I am not in the mood of going to the office today so I stay home".
Awesome. And then your team is located in Beijing, Nuremberg, Prague or wherever and you're to come to a different office for no reason whatsoever. Then you spend your whole day at the office communicating over IRC or mail for the sole reason of having your ass in an office chair.
The fact that the possibility to work remotely is evaluated based on the candidate experience, the location (eg. cost to the team to meet in person), timezone, and the location of the rest of the team, does not mean hiring locally is a policy. It is completely up to the team with very few exceptions.