JudS

Isn’t that offset by the cost of your travel being reduced?

Examples?

At some point you're going to have to come to grips with what motivates you. Writing code just for the sake of writing code will always get old eventually.

Find a company where you can see the purpose of your work. Where work is something other than a constant stream of assignments to be completed. If all you do is assignments, the work will never be fulfilling. Make sure that your work drives the success of the business/effort that you're working for.

If the goal is continued growth and to make yourself more valuable to your employer the key improvement in this step is underatanding the business extremely well and helping the VP and CTO to guide the work of the engineering team in a way that is beneficial to the business as a whole. That seems uninteresting to many but it's these people who turn their employers into successful businesses.

What are you interested in specifically?

"Waste cycles drawing trendy 3D junk"

Always wondered if that was indirectly aimed at me....

Lame self-promotion

Remote and Junior typically not a great combo

They likely feel that they are taking a bit of a risk to hire you. If your performance is as good or better than others, then you can expect that your pay will increase to match theirs over time. Longer-term it has to be about performance, not what degree you hold.