"remote" has a lot of different meanings to different people; there is "remote, but we expect to see you in the office every now and then", "remote, travel to the all hands meeting required/expected", "remote, but most people are in the office so remote workers will be at a disadvantage", "remote, USA", "remote, $set of countries" (RH). "remote, employee in $country, contractor elsewhere", "remote, AOE". Only the last class of remote appeals to certain groups of folks, look up the #vanlife hash tag, or the tech nomad trend. Probably the person you responded to was thinking of "remote, AOE" as the only "real" remote job.
I found GitLab's documentation about how their employment stuff works quite interesting, they strive to have most people employees of GitLab itself, or one of its subsidiaries or affiliated companies and only resort to contractors when they cannot yet do that.
