Building your careers is 99% about making contacts. You make contacts much easier when you are all there in person. Once you have a good network it is a lot eas

Building your careers is 99% about making contacts. You make contacts much easier when you are all there in person. Once you have a good network it is a lot easier to work remotely. To mitigate issues the best thing is to live in a city with a good community oriented around your specialty. That way you can take part in user-groups, small conferences, etc. That is you can network in-person, outside of work. It also allows you to find local jobs where you can start in person and transition to remote. Also focus on small to medium sized companies. Companies where you can make a visible impact and there isn't as much of the politicking as there can be at larger corps. The worst thing is to live somewhere remote, not near jobs or a community. You don't want to get in a situation where you have no options if you need them.