I've only worked remote, initially for the same reason.
But I think you're better than you assume, because you got the job out of a very large pool of potential candidates. By definition, you must've beat everyone who applied in that hiring round.
Which reminds me of the first rule of finding a job - it's just like dating - is a numbers game. Your chance of success on any attempt might be low, but then you just need to make enough attempts and the limit of P(offer) approaches 1.
Even remote companies can only consider so many applicants. In our last three job searches that number started at 100 or so, was whittled down using resumes to 40 or so who were whittled down to a dozen or so by tech screens and finally we interviewed less than ten. One hour interview followed by a take home for the top three. We chose one of the three. No stupid whiteboard. No long ass interviews. The take home was an hour or two at most and the people doing it knew they were finalists. We're a small company. A bigger company will have a bigger pool. The irony is, they won't get better candidates and if they have a shit hiring process, they'll get much worse. Other than problems with a couple of people's background which would have been immediately flagged had we done a proper check, our hires have been great developers.
But I think you're better than you assume, because you got the job out of a very large pool of potential candidates. By definition, you must've beat everyone who applied in that hiring round.
Which reminds me of the first rule of finding a job - it's just like dating - is a numbers game. Your chance of success on any attempt might be low, but then you just need to make enough attempts and the limit of P(offer) approaches 1.