There are two important aspects for successful remote working:

- Your company culture

- Your personality

For example, there is no way I'd participate in "very, very chatty" non-work meme sharing. First, people in my company don't expect this from anyone. Second, for me, it's easy to ignore these types of chats or just let them die off.

I just read the author's bio... he describes himself as as a "talkative full-stack coder." So for me, a quiet introvert, remote working is the opposite of stressful. No small talk, no pressure to participate in "office spirit," no "degradation of social skills" when my social skills are already at a set baseline, no desire to leave the house everyday for external stimuli, and no loneliness because all I need is my dog and close friends.

I've been working remotely for 12 years and I agree with the OP.

While I like not having to go to the office everyday and the more flexible arrangement there are a lot of challenges:

1. You miss out on a lot of socializing. 2. You lose visibility within the organisation. 3. Things that would be solved in 10 mins if you could ask for help face to face take hours. 4. Timezones can be a problem for some, but luckily not for me. 5. Other family members don't understand you still work and just think you're available whenever for whatever. 6. I knew I'd have to give up my team leader role when I went remote - it made no sense for a remote worker to do that.

I started going to a coffee shop every morning years ago just to have people to talk to.

It's a hard way to work, but it has its advantages as long as you're not trying for a promotion.

Compared to the stress I had before with a 6 hour a day commute in brutal LA and Ventura county traffics for an under-market startup gig working remote for a bigger, stable company is a dream come true. I do have to be up pretty early to connect out of state with the rest of the team, and I'm at an expert level in my field so those help. We're also slack-centric, which helps as well. It can be isolating and stressful but compared to the stress of commuting and trying to then concentrate in an open office this is like paradise.

Everything has it's pros and cons. I've been working remote for about 2 years now. Really, what it comes down to is the company culture around remote workers, and your personality. Luckily, the company I work for is very clued in to remote/async communication styles necessary to collaborate with remote employees.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of getting caught up in the social stuff that comes with working in the office. At times, I feel left out because the team in HQ goes out to lunch often, or they have special dinners and other events I obviously cannot attend, but overall I'm happier with my own personal life outside of work.

The only downside I can see is that career advancement seems more difficult. It's easy to become that remote developer black box depicted in the article, where your team views you as a means to an end. Almost like you're a genie in their computer. It becomes difficult to lead initiatives, and ultimately position yourself for advancement. I think that's why a lot of remote developers choose contract work.

I've considered contract work in the past, but I was never able to find a steady stream of work that paid well. It was always people trying to get work done as cheaply and quickly as possible.

One of the really important things I miss is being able to get a measure of how you're performing. When you're in the office you can pretty constantly see how you're going compared to your team mates and whether you're 'doing enough'. Working from home you don't get any of that and it's quite stressful wondering if you're doing enough or falling behind or what people think.

I've had to ask my boss a couple of time whether he's satisfied with my performance, output, etc.

Man, remember when in the 90’s real estate values were soon to collapse because everyone would be working remote, and Class A office space was going to be useless?

Funnily enough, they are saying the same thing now about AR/VR. We will see.