Some remote managers legitimately get away with doing no work, have no idea who you are, and will throw you under the bus if a single thing goes wrong. The bright side is that every other person I worked with in management was amazing - kind, sincere, extremely competent, tons of experience, and really personally wanted you to succeed and find what made you happiest. I loved our contractors but knowing they got paid 2x what I did to do less work was a tough pill to swallow at times. Promotions are *usually* earned but sometimes a person with less experience who has only been there 6 months will get promoted for no reason. There was no annual raise or any 1:1 year-end meeting with my boss.