One of the hidden assumptions in "hire people that write well" is that people who write well would also likely have high reading comprehension skills. Or, the inverse—I find that the ones who want to jump on a quick call vs. writing out their request are the same people who seemingly don't read the documents I produce.

Quickly reading and understanding almost everything I can find—code, plans, schedules, calendars, strategy, memos—is how I excel in remote environments. It's not a huge time commitment, 20 minutes a day, but I have the organization's "state" modeled in my head, which helps me identify dependencies and potential bottlenecks before they're surprises.