Whilst that's definitely great, my guess is that 90% of the people who would be interested and don't live in London, would not move to London for the job, even with a free Visa. Not supporting remote work therefore loses out on a majority of the potential talent pool for this job.
I don't have a strong opinion on whether it is good to support remote work. I agree we lose out on a lot of potential talent, but we also gain productivity benefits from in person collaboration.
However, this is a DeepMind-wide policy and I'm definitely not sold enough on the importance of supporting remote work to try and push for an exception here.
Is there any option for remote work? I'm sure there's plenty of people in less wrong who would live to work on alignment at deep mind, but don't happen to live in London...
Unfortunately not, though as Tom L points out below, if your concern is about getting a visa, that's relatively easy to do. DeepMind will provide assistance with the process. I went through it myself and it was relatively painless; it probably took 5-10 hours of my time total (including e.g. travel to and from the appointment where they collected biometric data).
0Tom Lieberum
I can't speak to the option for remote work but as a counterpoint, it seems very straightforward to get a UK visa for you and your spouse/children (at least straightforward relative to the US). The relevant visa to google is the Skilled Worker / Tier 2 visa if you want to know more.
ETA: Of course, there are still legitimate reasons for not wanting to move. Just wanted to point out that the legal barrier is lower than you might think.
Whilst that's definitely great, my guess is that 90% of the people who would be interested and don't live in London, would not move to London for the job, even with a free Visa. Not supporting remote work therefore loses out on a majority of the potential talent pool for this job.