101–110 of 128 posts
Remote work could be perfect for individual contributors, but it's still full of challenges for people who work on teams. There's been a lot of buzz lately about remote work. I have been working remotely since 2012; the challenges of remote work are not new to me. I work with 30+ people, and our clients are in different timezones. Our team includes full-stack developers, designers, product leads, and other support st…
It fails with respect to growing junior team members. It’s impossible for junior team members to observe the day-to-day patterns, habits and general implicit knowledge of senior team members that they would pick up (mostly not consciously) in an office simply through observation.
Do you think this might be solved by more screensharing and/or pair programming together with experienced devs?
Managers are going to be PRO office work because without a venue for all manner of office politics, their effectiveness is diminished, particularly in age-identity politics. They will say something like "we are unable to foster a community of communal idea sharing and mentorship of younger employees." What they want is to use their new hires who are going to be college age to ostracize and push out more experienced workers they want to replace. The whole kumbaya campfire thing does not work if no one can see what the other looks like or if they are in their peer group or not.
It fails with respect to growing junior team members. It’s impossible for junior team members to observe the day-to-day patterns, habits and general implicit knowledge of senior team members that they would pick up (mostly not consciously) in an office simply through observation.
Keeping an eye in the jrs work item completion rate and eliciting if there is a problem when it slows down also helps
I will be taking part in a county task force meeting on Tuesday where we'll be looking at applying for grant money as well as looking at doing more problem solving. This still holds us back in 2020 and really shouldn't.
I absolutely think you lose something from lack of face-to-face contact. Some of the most productive leadership and decison-making sessions I've had came from sitting around a table or sharing a meal or a drink with a team, and going back and forth about something. Additionally, casual contact helps too. I put a couch in my office, and people would come just sit down and talk. The setting set the vibe. I had some gre…
as someone who's been remote for 10+ years: both (the value of casual conversation and higher face-to-face productivity) ring true to me. If you want to have a remote team I advice having a space for casual conversation and non-work video calls, it improves things a bit for the first. For the latter, IRL gatherings/meetups are valuable but obviously not something you can do all the time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think this might be solved by more screensharing and/or pair programming together with experienced devs?
There is so much you learn from others by implicit body language. For example, the junior learns from the senior's "your work today was okay" body language vs "your work today was goo" body language. The senior can't always verbalize these thoughts, because the words often can have outsized and unwanted impact on people that body language does not.
While this is an unfortunate typo, imagining this body language makes for a great visual.
At the moment it's great because I'm at home with three housemates/friends. But I think I'd get lonely pretty quickly if it was just me. Co-working spaces might solve this a bit (never worked in one so don't know how much people socialise).
It fails with respect to growing junior team members. It’s impossible for junior team members to observe the day-to-day patterns, habits and general implicit knowledge of senior team members that they would pick up (mostly not consciously) in an office simply through observation.
Like most things related to remote work, you just have to be more formal in the the approach. Our team has successfully developed several cohorts of college hires remotely. You have to give them consistent (daily, for hours) access to mentoring/senior resources via scheduled time, keep design or other higher level meetings public and make sure the juniors know they are invited to attend, and make clear to the junior…