Don’t start working remotely because you never want to talk to other people. Many engineers dream of a faceless meritocracy. A place where they can focus on solving technical problems without the distraction of human interaction. A distributed team isn’t that place.
The cliché of the antisocial engineer has some truth to it. Solitude is an important part of getting your work done. It feels really good to work hard without distractions and get a lot done. But don’t forget: good code isn’t enough.
Just writing good code will get you nowhere if you alienate your team in the process. I take it back, it will get you outsourced. Being a black box where specifications go in and code comes out is what many companies are looking for when they hire teams in Bangalore.
When you work remotely communication and team work are even more important. You need to spend the time and effort to stay close to your team and that is a lot easier if you want to do it. Learn to love communication. It will make your team stronger, your products better, and you a better engineer.
The ultimate goal of any remote engineer is to get their team to think of them as a real person. When your team sees you as just a username they will never trust you and they won’t work well with you. Being social with your team is just a nice thing to do, it is a critical part of being successful and getting promoted.