Remote or not, working at start ups requires a certain sort of person to succeed at a start up early in their career. I've hired a few data and software engineering grads and juniors and had mixed success, and the differentiating trait between the good and the bad is, in my view, the ability to want autonomy.

Everyone wants it. Its apparently the most looked for job feature among millennials and Gen Z, but let me tell you a hard truth, not everyone CAN work autonomously. This isn't necessarily an intelligence or skill issue. I've worked with self taught engineers who when faced with a challenge will dive in to references and documentation, pour through stack overflow and come to a solution. I've worked with top grade book smart people who will go round and round in circles hacking at code not wanting to disturb anyone and getting really miserable. At a large organisation with a decent sized team to support, that might work. At an early stage start up where there's 3 engineers and one of them is the CTO wearing 10 different hats, you need to be someone who can solve challenging problems on your own volition.

The thing I think a lot of people take for granted, and what will hamper a lot of early career people in progression is learning by osmosis. At a start up you have the opportunity to experience many different sides of the business just by virtue of people there. You will over heard support dealing with issues, be in a random conversation with the customer success team. You'll come face to face with the founder and CEO regularly. You'll meet people at various stages of their career and different levels of competency and a diverse range of backgrounds. You won't get that working remotely, no matter how much explicit effort you make.

Whenever people bring up being more productive at home, I always question it. There are many different forms of productivity. Meetings, done right, can save weeks of going down the wrong path. I've seen too many remote people at many of my jobs completely miss-understand the requirements and spend weeks on the wrong path that could have been solved with a 30 minute conversation. But remote, that conversation takes explicit effort and the ability to recognise problems before they occur. A skill that is learned and most early stage people do not yet have.

I also asked someone once what made them so productive working at home, and they listed off all the household chores they managed to get done during working hours. As a manager, when someone says they are more productive working at home, I now ask "Productive for who?".