I have been working remotely for a while now. These are the things I learned.
- time difference matters. It is better if there is some overlap with at least some people in the team.
- "showing up" (via various communication channels) have more value at one of the places I worked than the actual work.
- I was consistently rated less compared to others because my interactions were only over video, once or twice a week and via chat channels and it could never make up for face-to-face communication. This is highly subjective. At another place, I never had such problems.
- Expect to add a lot of stress in your life (again subjective).
- Pair programming with colleagues over video/google-hangout can be extremely valuable.
- video calls mostly suck, especially if you have low upstream bandwidth (which was the case with me).
- make plans to travel and stay with your colleagues for a week or so, once in a few months.
- "everyone being remote" is better than one or two people alone being remote and the rest in a central office. That way, the company is "set up" for remote working and people take care to put everything online in a wiki etc.. Not so, with a centralized office with only a few people working remotely.
- It is also very easy to get burned out working more hours, especially if the other side is in an overlapping your day. It happened to me many times. This needs fixing at org level and should meet the expectations of everyone.
HTH.