How to Thrive as a Remote Worker

This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Parsity and delivered to your inbox for free!Standing Out as a Remote Worker Takes a Different StrategyMy first experience as a remote worker was a disaster.Before I joined a San Francisco-based team with a lead developer in Connecticut, I had worked in person, five days a week. I thought success was simple: write good code, solve hard problems, deliver results. So I put my head down and worked harder than ever.Twelve-hour days became normal as the boundary between work and personal life disappeared. My kitchen table became my office.I rarely asked for help because I didn’t want to seem incompetent. I stayed quiet in team Slack channels because I wasn’t sure what to say.Despite working some of the longest hours of my career, I made the slowest progress. I felt disconnected from t