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Standing Out as a Remote Worker Takes a Different Strategy

My first experience as a remote worker was a disaster.

Before I joined a San Francisco-based team with a lead developer in Connecticut, I had worked in person, five days a week. I thought success was simple: write good code, solve hard problems, deliver results. So I put my head down and worked harder than ever.

Twelve-hour days became normal as the boundary between work and personal life disappeared. My kitchen table became my office.

I rarely asked for help because I didn’t want to seem incompetent. I stayed quiet in team Slack channels because I wasn’t sure what to say.

Despite working some of the longest hours of my career, I made the slowest progress. I felt disconnected from the team. I had no idea if my work mattered or if anyone noticed what I was doing. I was burning out.

Eventually, I realized the real problem: I was invisible.

The Office Advantage You Lose When Remote

In an office, visibility happens naturally. Colleagues see you arrive early or stay late. They notice when you are stuck on a problem. They hear about your work in hallway conversations and over lunch. Physical presence creates recognition with almost no effort.

Remote work removes those signals. Your manager cannot see you at your desk. Your teammates don’t know you’ve hit a roadblock unless you say so. You can work long days and still appear less engaged than someone in the office.

That is the shift many people miss: Remote work requires execution plus deliberate communication.

What Actually Works

By my second remote role, I knew I had to change to protect my sanity and still succeed.

Here are five things I did that made a real difference.

1. Over-communicating

I began sharing updates in team channels regularly, not just when asked. “Working on the payment integration today; ready for review tomorrow.” “Hit a blocker with API rate limits; investigating options.” These took seconds but made my work visible and invited help sooner.

2. Setting limits

When your home is also your office, overwork becomes the default. I started ending most days at 5 p.m. and transitioning out of work mode with a walk or gym session. That ritual helped prevent burnout.

3. Volunteering for presentations

Presenting remotely felt less intimidating than standing in front of a room. I started volunteering for demos and lunch-and-learns. This increased my visibility beyond my immediate team and improved my communication skills.

4. Promoting others publicly

When someone helped me, I thanked them in a public channel. When a teammate shipped something impressive, I called it out. This builds goodwill and signals collaboration. In remote environments, gratitude is visible and memorable.

5. Building relationships deliberately

In an office, relationships form naturally. Remotely, you have to create those moments. I started an engineering book club that met every other week to discuss a technical book. It became a low-pressure way to connect with people across the organization.

The Counterintuitive Reality

With these habits, I got promoted faster in this remote job than I ever did in an office. I moved from senior engineer to engineering manager in under two years, while maintaining a better work-life balance.

Remote work offers flexibility and freedom, but it comes with a tax. You are easier to overlook and more likely to burn out unless you are intentional in your actions.

So, succeeding remotely takes deliberate effort in communication, relationships, and boundaries. If you do that well, remote work can unlock more opportunities than you might expect.

—Brian

Despite its critical role in maintaining a secure network, authentication software often goes unnoticed by users. Alan DeKok now runs one of the most widely used remote authentication servers in the world—but he didn’t initially set out to work in cybersecurity. DeKok studied nuclear physics before starting the side project that eventually turned into a three-decade-long career.

Read more here.

We’re just two months into 2026, and layoffs in the tech industry are already ramping up. According to data compiled by RationalFX, more than half of the 30,700 layoffs this year have come from Amazon, which announced that it would be cutting the roles of 16,000 employees in late January. Will the trend continue through 2026?

Read more here.

Recent research suggests that a majority of organizations have a significant gap when it comes to AI skills among leadership. To help fill the gap, IEEE has partnered with the Rutgers Business School to offer an online “mini-MBA” program, combining business strategy and deep AI literacy. The program spans 12 weeks and 10 modules that teach students how to implement AI strategies in their own organizations.

Read more here.

Riley Walz, a software engineer famous for his online stunts, is joining OpenAI to research and develop new ways for humans to interact with AI, WIRED has learned. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the hire.

Walz built a reputation as Silicon Valley’s jester and has created a series of viral web projects that double as social commentary. His most recent initiative, Jmail, lets users search Jeffrey Epstein’s emails as if they’re accessing his personal Gmail inbox. Another project, Find My Parking Cops, used publicly available data to reverse engineer San Francisco’s parking ticket system to show people exactly where each parking enforcement officer last wrote a ticket.

Now, Walz’s skills creating novel web experiences will be put to use in OAI Labs, a relatively new team led by research leader Joanne Jang. The team is secretive about what it’s been working on but has been tasked with “inventing and prototyping new interfaces for how people collaborate with AI,” according to Jang.

OpenAI has spent the past several years racing with Google and Anthropic to create new, compelling ways for people to use its AI models. While ChatGPT has been a hit with consumers, now reaching more than 800 million people every week, the company is eyeing new interfaces to improve these experiences. The move comes as millions of developers have started using coding agents such as Claude Code as their main interface to access AI models. With hires like Walz, OpenAI hopes to get ahead of the next big AI product.

Walz’s online stunts have landed him in hot water from time to time. The Find My Parking Cops website lasted just four hours before San Francisco city officials shut down the live data feed Walz’s tool relied on. A San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency representative said at the time that it shut down the tool to ensure “employees are able to do their jobs safely and without disruption.”

It’s not always city officials giving him a hard time, though. After the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was shot dead in New York City, and police said the killer had fled on a CitiBike, Walz tried to analyze trip data he had previously scraped for a separate project to help with the search. Walz told The New York Times that people online called him a “bootlicker” for helping authorities and threatened his safety.

Full Circle, the developer behind the new Skate game, has announced that it is restructuring and laying off staff. It’s not yet clear how many roles will be impacted by the changes, but the restructuring is happening less than six months after skate. launched in early access on September 15, 2025.

“We’re reshaping Full Circle to better support skate.’s long-term future,” Full Circle says. “These shifts mean making changes to our team structure, and some roles will be impacted. The teammates affected are talented colleagues and friends who helped build the foundation of skate. Their creativity and dedication are deeply ingrained in what players experience today. This decision is not a reflection of their impact and we’re committed to supporting them through this transition.”

Engadget has contacted Full Circle’s owner EA for more information about the layoffs. We’ll update this article if we hear back.

EA originally formed Full Circle in 2021 with a staff of development talent from the original Skate team. Skate was often positioned as a more realistic competitor to the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, but the new studio has ultimately taken the franchise in a slightly different direction than fans may have expected. Previous Skate games were paid experiences with single-player and multiplayer modes, while skate. is a free-to-play live-service game supported with microtransactions.

Recent history, both the failure of Concord and the ongoing struggles of Highguard, serves as a testament to how hard it is to launch a live service game in the 2020s. Full Circle’s announcement notes the “tens of millions” of players that have tried the new game, but it’s possible a struggle to keep players interested and spending on microtransactions could be why it’s restructuring.

Richard Hammond slid into the driver’s seat of BYD’s Yangwang U9 Xtreme with a good mix of caution and exhilaration. With a top speed of 308 miles per hour, this Chinese hypercar had already broken the manufacturing speed record. Its four electric motors together produced an astounding nearly 3,000 horsepower. He was well-versed in the specification sheet, which included a 1,200-volt battery system, torque vectoring, adaptive suspension capable of lifting the vehicle over obstacles, and much more.

Without a wind-up or crescendo, the hypercar went from being motionless to warp speed in an instant. The strange thing was that the 200 mph didn’t even feel that significant. With such great power, you would think the U9 Xtreme would be a monster, but instead it just drove smoothly without any hiccups.

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Hammond was surprised when a new aspect of the vehicle emerged in the cornering arena. The U9 Xtreme was quite sharp and kept its body flat in the turns, contrary to his belief that it would be best suited for driving in a straight line. He questioned his function in operating the vehicle because the active systems handled the weight transfer and grip so efficiently. Was he pushing something that could already handle the tough sections, or merely directing the car? Even under some very harsh corners, the chassis refused to roll or pitch too much.

Every time he floored it, the pull and response were immediate and unrelenting, making the power addictive in a positive way. He was thrilled by the car’s accuracy and composed application of force, yet he was constantly on edge due to its immense power. He acknowledged that he was afraid, which was probably rather common. There’s a problem if you’re not a little afraid in a car like this.

Ultimately, the U9 Xtreme left him both unnerved by its potential and genuinely impressed by its ingenuity. The fastest production automobile in the world is made in China, and it’s actually rather astonishing how confidently they’ve done it. The U9 Xtreme quietly gave its unadulterated performance instead of being all show and no substance. After everything was said and done, Hammond left with a smile on his face, his nerves unharmed, and a fresh appreciation for what BYD had accomplished.

At the beginning of the year, The Cut kicked off a brief discourse cycle by declaring a new lifestyle trend: “friction-maxxing.”

The idea, in a nutshell, is that people have overconvenienced themselves with apps, AI, and other means of near-instant gratification—and would be better off with increased friction in their daily lives, which is to say those mundane challenges that ask some minor effort of them.

Whatever your feelings on that philosophy, the use of “maxxing” as a suffix assumed to be familiar or at least intelligible to most readers of a mainstream news outlet is evidence of another trend: the assimilation of incel terminology across the broader internet. The online ecosystem of incels, or “involuntarily celibate” men, is saturated with this sort of clinical jargon; its aggrieved participants insulate, isolate, and identify themselves through in-group codespeak that is meant to baffle and repel outsiders. So how did non-incels (“normies,” as incels would label them) end up adopting and recontextualizing these loaded words?

Slang, no matter its origins, has a viral nature. It tends to break containment and mutate. The buzzword “woke,” as it pertains to our current politics, comes from African American Vernacular English and once referred to an awareness of racial and social injustice—this usage dates to the middle of the 20th century, preceding even the civil rights movement. But the culture wars of this century have turned “woke” into a favorite pejorative of right-wingers, who wield it as a catchall term for anything that threatens their ideology, such as Black pilots or gender-neutral pronouns.

Back in 2014, the eruption of the Gamergate harassment campaign set the stage for a different linguistic realignment. An organized backlash to women working in the video game industry, and eventually any sort of diversity or progressivism within the medium, it exposed a vein of reactionary anger that would gain a fuller voice during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. This was a period when many in the digital mainstream got their first taste of the trollish nihilism and invective that fuels toxic message boards such as 4chan and gave rise to a network of anti-feminist manosphere sites collectively known as the “PSL” community: PUAHate (a board for venting about pickup artists, it was shut down soon after the 2014 Isla Vista killing spree carried out by Elliot Rodger, who frequented the forum), SlutHate (a straightforward misogyny hub), and Lookism (where incels viciously critique each other’s appearance).

Lookism, named for the idea that prejudice against the less attractive is as common and pernicious as sexism or racism, is the only forum of the PSL trifecta that survives today, and while we don’t know who coined the “maxxing” idiom, it’s the likeliest source for the first verb with this construction. “Looksmaxxing,” which borrows from the role-playing game concept of “min-maxing,” or elevating a character’s strengths while limiting weaknesses, became the preferred expression for attempts to improve one’s appearance in pursuit of sex. This could mean something as simple as a style makeover or as extreme as “bonesmashing,” a supposed technique of achieving a more defined jaw by tapping it with a hammer.

If the 2000s introduced people to pickup lingo like “game” and “negging,” the 2010s ushered in language that extended the Darwinian vision of the dating pool as a cutthroat and strictly hierarchical marketplace. “AMOG,” an initialism for “alpha male of the group,” gave us “mogging,” a display where one man flexes his physical superiority over a rival. An ideally masculine specimen might also be recognized as a “Chad,” who allegedly enjoys his pick of attractive partners, while a Chad among Chads is, of course, a “Gigachad.” Women were disparaged as “female humanoids,” then “femoids,” and finally just “foids.”

It seems like any and every industry can have its own awards show these days. And why not? Most of us appreciate a chance to bust out the sequins and satin from time to time. If you can celebrate excellent work or make some extra biz dev bucks at the same time, all the better. Snap is the latest social media company to launch its own take on the glitz and glam. The Snappy Awards Show will be held at the company’s headquarters on March 31. Comedian and content creator Matt Friend will host the event.

Snapchat has been adding more tools for influencers to build audiences, most recently launching individual creator subscriptions. An awards show seems to be part of that same agenda, spotlighting popular personalities from many different fields. There will be Snappys handed out for categories such as Spotlight MVP, Best Storyteller and Breakout Creator of the Year, plus awards for collaboration, cultural impact and success in single subjects.

Snapchat isn’t the first social media platform to honor the personalities using it. TikTok hosted its inaugural awards show in the US last year.

Rega has been on a quiet tear lately. First it shocked its traditionally sensible customer base with a flagship preamplifier and power amplifier combo that wanders deep into five-figure territory. Now it pivots back toward vinyl loyalists with something far more on brand, but still firmly premium. Enter the new Aos MC, a moving coil only phono stage derived directly from the company’s reference Aura.

First shown at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show 2026, the Aos MC borrows heavily from the £4620 Aura MC stage in both circuit topology and layout, with the stated goal of bringing listeners closer to that reference level performance without crossing into cost-no-object insanity. U.S. pricing has not been finalized, but expectations place it in the $2300 to $2500 range when it lands stateside; a bracket packed with serious competition from MOON by Simaudio, Pro-Ject, Musical Fidelity, EAT, EAR, MoFi Electronics and others.

Rega promises exceptional definition and greater realism, and the Aos MC is designed to partner with a wide range of moving coil cartridges thanks to flexible gain and loading options. The question is not whether Rega knows how to build a phono stage — it clearly does. The question is whether Aura-inspired circuitry at roughly one third the price can dominate one of the most competitive segments in high performance analog right now.

Aura Inspired Circuitry Targets $3,000 High End Market

The Rega Aos MC is a two stage, all analogue moving coil phono preamplifier with no digital control circuitry in the signal path. The layout is deliberately simple and tightly organized to avoid unnecessary components that could compromise performance. At its core is a symmetrical, complementary Class A amplifier using parallel low noise FETs configured as compound pairs.

That choice is not cosmetic. FET devices ensure that no bias current flows into the cartridge coil, which protects the cartridge’s magnetic geometry and avoids altering its behavior. The input circuit also minimizes coupling components between the cartridge and the first gain stage, further reducing opportunities for signal degradation.

Loading and gain flexibility are handled in a straightforward, hardware based way. Users can select resistive loading at 70, 100, 150, or 400 ohms, and capacitive loading at 1000 or 4300 pF, allowing the Aos MC to accommodate a broad range of moving coil cartridges.

Gain can be switched between 69.3 dB and 63.5 dB, a 6 dB difference accessible from the rear panel, where you will also find RCA inputs and outputs. RIAA equalization accuracy is rated at better than ±0.2 dB from 65 Hz to 70 kHz, with a frequency response extending from 17.5 Hz to 100 kHz. THD is specified at 0.03 percent.

The half width aluminum enclosure is not just about aesthetics. It provides shielding against stray RFI while keeping the footprint compact at 220 x 80 x 330 mm and 2.9 kg. A self adjusting servo control compensates for temperature variations to maintain stable operation, and an automatic standby mode reduces power consumption to 0.4 W when idle, though it can be disabled via rear panel dip switches. In short, the Aos MC focuses on careful analogue execution, sensible adjustability, and measured performance rather than feature creep.

The Bottom Line

The Aos MC stands out because it keeps the signal path strictly analogue, uses parallel low noise FETs to avoid bias current in the cartridge coil, and offers meaningful loading and gain flexibility without drifting into feature overload. It is clearly aimed at serious moving coil users who care about circuit integrity, RIAA precision, and long term cartridge compatibility rather than app control or digital displays.

At an expected $2,300 to $2,500 in the U.S., it walks straight into competition from the MoFi UltraPhono Pro, EAT E-Glo 2, and Cyrus Audio 40 PPA — three fully featured and well engineered options in the same performance bracket.

If you are running a quality MC cartridge and want something derived from Rega’s Aura platform without stepping into five figure territory, the Aos MC makes a clear case for itself. And for MM users feeling left out, relax. An Aos MM version is on the way.

For more information: rega.co.uk

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