[courtewing]

I live in a small city in the US, and remote work has provided me opportunities for career progression and networking that would otherwise be impossible for me unless I moved my family somewhere else.

The key for me has been to work for distributed companies rather than as one of the few remote workers on the team. This seems to make all the difference in the world.

[ben1040]

Pretty much this. I live in St. Louis. I've got 15 years' career experience, the last 5 of which were remote; I've been able to do impactful work for major east coast and west coast names you've definitely heard of.

It's been an amazing opportunity to level up my career and my skills. If you told me in late 2012 that I'd be doing what I do now, where I do now, I'd have laughed you out of the room.

That said I've had to work a little harder on things like conference speaking and attendance, in order to build up a network and offset some of what I miss from not being in the room every day with people in NYC/SF.