Absolutely, a job being remote didn't change the required skillset, but before remote work became as prevalent as it is now, the imperative to learn (and more importantly, teach) these skillsets was probably much lower in rural settings than it was in urban ones.

When I went to high school in the city I had to take a computing class to learn how to use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, and Access (to a much lesser degree,) and there was a lot of emphasis put on how important learning how to use these programs at least to a basic level would be in our professional lives.

My friend who's a farmer went to a high school in rural Iowa and part of his curriculum was learning tractor maintenance, taking care of farm animals, and about agricultural science. He also took computer classes, but the same emphasis wasn't there.

Naturally, someone thought that one skillset would benefit me more than the other, and someone thought that one skillset would benefit him more than the other, and funny enough, they were right. I work in an office, and he's a farmer.

But maybe what remote work is doing now is breaking down the wall (at least in one direction,) and maybe we'll see these skills becoming more widespread everywhere as people in rural environments start to learn the skills necessary to take up remote office work instead of moving to the city to do it. I wonder what this article might look like if it was written five or ten years from now.