> Talked to my boss on Skype once a week to discuss progress. The rest was up to me. Most of communication was done via ticket comments.
Wait, is this common? I'm constantly answering questions and helping my team along as people get stuck all day. If I had the kind of an arrangement you're describing, I'd just get all my work done for the week in a day, and I wouldn't have a problem. Was there anything preventing you from doing that?
Maybe I'm doing remote wrong? I can choose "where" as long as it's quiet and has good internet, but I can't choose the "when" at all.
I have a phd in deep learning, so I do R&D type of work, where I mostly read papers, build models, run experiments, and occasionally write emails to others who work on similar problems.
I actually didn't like to be so disconnected from the group. I like face to face brainstorming sessions, and I couldn't really have that there.
Sounds like you might be more of a lynchpin to the team than the other commenter (which isn't a negative to them). You could try being less available, say no more often, etc. But some people just can't get away from it.
Here's a forbes article[0] about this phenomenon. Top performers get rewarded with more work in organizations generally speaking. The next job I have I am going to attempt to appear less competent as I have found that getting a 5% raise rather than 3% isn't really worth all the extra hours and weekends.
[0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2018/01/25/the-curse-of...
About being online - I worked remotely for a year with a 10 hour time difference. Talked to my boss on Skype once a week to discuss progress. The rest was up to me. Most of communication was done via ticket comments. Sometimes I skipped a day or even two, but I knew that afterwards I'd have to work extra to make progress.
I don't know if you're doing something wrong, or maybe it's just your personality, but when I did what I loved, it didn't feel like work at all. That was at a small startup where I was the first engineer, and I worked alongside CEO, CTO, and later a couple more guys, building something really interesting. If I felt how you feel, that's the only way I would work. The salary was a third of what I can make now at any big corp in California, but unless you really need the money (kids, mortgage, old age and no savings, etc), then you really don't need much to be happy.