As a second example to corroborate your point: my team has one remote worker who is unquestionably one of the lowest performers on the team. Not because he's less skilled, but because he hasn't dealt well with the difficulties presented by being remote (such as needing to be very intentional in spending time assimilating and documenting communal knowledge and in building relationships within the team and with extended teams).

Since he's the only one, he's constantly getting overlooked by the local folks (people forgetting to set up a concall bridge for meetings or set up webex for presentations, impromptu meetings to sync up on some issue that he gets left behind on, etc.)