[natchiketa]

Years ago when I was a remote employee, I definitely did become marginalized. Projects I took on and completed were often assumed to have been done by an on site employee. People on calls sometimes spoke of me as if there was no chance I was on the call. The CEO even talked about getting me to train my replacement, apparently assuming I wasn't part of the call concerning the department of which I was the lead.

I've found that the issue with being a remote employee is the employee part. My experience has been that trusting your job security to an employer is just not as safe as it used to be. Nowadays as a freelancer who works on mostly long-term contracts, it's possible that some of my clients wouldn't think much of replacing me, but if they do decide to stop using me, I can grab another contract. My office doesn't change. My machine is still my machine, i.e. they're often the more replaceable one.

However, and as others point out here, this only works if you have lots of experience in something highly in demand.