Being "out of sight, out of mind" from management generally means you're passed over for promotions, and often the first to get cut during layoffs.
It's just human nature. It's easier to layoff the person that's been working from across the country (or another country) than it is to layoff the person at the desk next to you that you've worked beside for years.
If your job security rests on the boss seeing your face, many currently unemployed people will tell you, its not very secure.
- Being targeted for layoffs says more about the company you work for and less about your own career.
- Passed over for promotions is again saying a lot about the company, and many folks who work in offices still have to change jobs to get career advancement.
I, for one, believe that cultivating remote work competencies that hedge against either of those things is a valuable career skill. It means you can't schmooze your way in person through career growth, you have to do it by demonstrating real value to companies that will value you fairly.
Caring too much is a bad bargain. The companies don't care too much about you and me
It's like in Star Trek, with this common advice to given to captains on the show by their friends/colleagues: never let yourself be promoted to admiral, because you'll be taken off the starship and put behind a desk to push paperwork, and that is just boring.
This makes me think of Eisenhower, who I only found out recently apparently never saw combat, yet pretty much went to the top in his career and then became President.
Whether paperwork is boring or meaningless is a subjective value judgment. What if it's the paperwork for planning D-Day?
Teams tend to do better when they're sharing remote or sharing coming in. Teams tend to do the best (ymmv) when they're full remote but are local, so they can come in as much as they want to meetup when it is beneficial to do so.
I’ve worked at many companies with remote employees as well as being remote myself, as well as companies that were fully remote.
Unless everyone is remote , and there is no office then it is career suicide.
You will forever be the “remote guy”. You won’t be involved in discussions involving direction of the company, product, etc because those happen in person - let alone considered for any kind of promotion.
I'm on the long-term-remote path, but I want to see how this plays the rest of the year before making the jump.
While you're waiting, you might start planning _how_ you will work from home. A good home setup can make all the difference, and can involve expenses like good office chairs, desk, computer, upgraded internet service, etc.
Might be a good time to look around the house what you need, where you're gonna put it, etc.
It has no effect on your career if you learn to not depend on in-company tracks for your success.