> Remote-first, multi-time-zone companies simply don't do meetings.
Having worked for such companies, this is not true, at least in my expreience. Plenty of meetings. Very long ones sometimes, 2 hours is not unusual; 3, 4 hours sometimes on Zoom or Hangouts.
> [non-remote-first companies would] rather you be writing code now that will be obsolete in 6 months and take a year to replace, rather than take 2 months to come up with a plan for your code that will take 3 months to write and last for 3 years.
Hmm. I can assure you some remote-first, multi-time-zone companies would also rather you be writing code now that will be obsolete soon than take substantial time to come up with a plan for code that will last years and serve the product well.
Visibility counts for a lot in some remote-first environments. Depending on the management, they may regard the best form of visibility to be regular code updates, PRs, issues filed etc, rather than taking your time over deeper design and research. If they pay more attention to quantity than effectiveness, that can mean shipping code and iterating every few days is something they are looking to see, and a high priority if you want to keep your job. Async written communication on design is sometimes seen as too much talking, not enough doing.