So you’ve decided to work a hybrid schedule. Maybe even totally remote. You’ve even already signed up for the ConnectingVA app through MidPenRideShare and are logging all the days and miles you don’t drive to work — racking up points to enter to win gift cards every month.
But you’re worried about one thing: Will not being in the office limit my upward mobility?
It’s a fair concern. And you’re not wrong to think about it.
There used to be a reliable playbook for getting ahead. Show up early, stay late, make sure the right people saw you doing both. Remote and hybrid work quietly dismantled those rules — and didn’t really replace them with new ones. Which means a lot of talented people are doing great work and wondering if it is going anywhere.
Let’s be honest: proximity bias exists. People who are physically present tend to get more face time with decision-makers, get looped into conversations earlier, and get considered for opportunities first. Acknowledging that isn’t defeatist — it’s useful.
Once you know what you’re working with, you can work around it. And stick to your new hybrid work set up and keep moving ahead.
Many people resist making their work visible because it feels like bragging. Here’s a better way to think about it: your manager can only advocate for you based on what they know. If they don’t know what you’ve solved or where you’ve added value, they can’t go to bat for you — even if they want to. Sharing your work isn’t ego. It’s context.
Write things down and share them. A short weekly update to your manager — what you worked on, what you moved forward, what’s next — is one of the highest-return habits a remote worker can build. It takes ten minutes, keeps you top of mind, and creates a paper trail that becomes very useful at review time.
Show up with substance in meetings. You don’t need to talk the most, but you do need to be present and contributing. Come prepared with a relevant question or observation. Follow up with a clear summary of what you committed to. One well-prepared contribution in a high-visibility meeting is worth more than ten filler comments across the week.
Build relationships outside your immediate team. In an office, relationships happen organically. Remote work doesn’t give you that — you have to build it deliberately. Ask for a 30-minute intro call with someone in a different department. Volunteer for a cross-functional project. Relationships across the organization are often how opportunities find you.
Be the person who makes things easier. Document the process no one ever wrote down. Summarize the meeting so others don’t have to. It sounds small, but it adds up.
Tell your manager you want to grow. Not in a demanding way — just clearly. “I want to take on more responsibility in the next year. What would that look like from where you sit?” Most managers are not actively plotting your career development unless you put it on the table. Remote work makes this even more true.
Ask what skills or experiences you’d need to reach the next level. Ask whether there are opportunities coming up that you could raise your hand for. Then follow through visibly on whatever comes from that conversation.
Remote work has made it easier to build a professional presence that extends beyond your current employer. Share an article you found useful and add a sentence about why. Write a short post about a problem you solved. Comment on something in your industry with an actual opinion. Over time, this creates a record of your thinking and expertise that lives outside any single job — and means that if your current company doesn’t recognize what you bring, other ones will.
What most people actually want isn’t a particular room — it’s autonomy, recognition, impact, and compensation that reflects their value. All of that is still available in a remote-first world.
It just requires a different set of habits, a little more intentionality, and the willingness to advocate for yourself. The good news: those habits are learnable. And reducing the friction around your commute — through tools like ConnectingVA — means one less barrier between you and showing up as your best, most consistent self.
The people who advance aren’t waiting to be discovered. They’re the ones who made it easy for others to champion them.
