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What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

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Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#11

Post by Spartan-S63 »

uxhacker wrote: post #4

I have found working with remote first natives that the narrowness of their knowledge is also very high. When you work in an office there is a some knowledge transfer happening having lunch with the guy in accounts or the women in the sales team. This non structured learning is missed in remote work.

I don't fully agree. If the only way information and cross-pollination is through in-office water-cooler conversation, that's an organizational smell.

If you have most of the work and conversation is done in public, you're not hiring very curious people.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#12

Post by Ecstatify »

uxhacker wrote: post #4

I have found working with remote first natives that the narrowness of their knowledge is also very high. When you work in an office there is a some knowledge transfer happening having lunch with the guy in accounts or the women in the sales team. This non structured learning is missed in remote work.

If this knowledge is genuinely valuable, it should be transferred deliberately rather than by chance. If part of your job requires understanding what the accounts team does, you should spend time shadowing them and getting proper context, not rely on overhearing conversations at lunch.

The argument that important knowledge is best acquired through incidental office interactions sounds more like nostalgia for office culture than an effective approach to knowledge sharing.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#13

Post by RealCodingOtaku »

I have worked with graduates joining remotely during the pandemic, like most graduates they also lacked the skill to work in a real environment, but we can teach them, it's easy. But during the AI boom, the people who could teach the graduates were let go, leaving only a handful of senior engineers that had to "increase their productivity" while also mentoring the juniors. Guess where people cut corners to keep their job longer?

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#14

Post by embedding-shape »

uxhacker wrote: post #4

I have found working with remote first natives that the narrowness of their knowledge is also very high. When you work in an office there is a some knowledge transfer happening having lunch with the guy in accounts or the women in the sales team. This non structured learning is missed in remote work.

Yeah, that seems obvious to me, even to me as a programmer who likes to be able to take long stretches of solitude to really nail the solution to a problem. The indirect transfer of knowledge, understanding and alignment that happens when you're not just sitting at your desk working on your things, seems invaluable once you've had the experience of a workplace where that happens naturally and seems to be able to "steer the entire ship".

Finding a way to make this happen in a remote environment feels like what's missing right now. I know there been some Slack/chat apps that kind of force those kind of meetings, but it's very different from what happens with real humans in real places in close proximity to each other.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#15

Post by graemep »

mattdeboard wrote: post #5

The way this position conforms to the interests of the capital class, and conflicts with those of the labor class, is a red flag. It simultaneously and conveniently: 1. takes the heat off AI blowback 2. synergizes perfectly with "RTO" mandates (to the extent this needed synergy to become A Widespread Thing) On that basis alone, I'll wait for further analysis. Edit: to be clear I'm no anti-AI holdout, and I actually d…

RTO mandates are primarily pushed by the managerial class, not the capitalist class. Both want to blame AI so its not clear they want to avoid doing so.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#16

Post by Negitivefrags »

mattdeboard wrote: post #5

The way this position conforms to the interests of the capital class, and conflicts with those of the labor class, is a red flag. It simultaneously and conveniently: 1. takes the heat off AI blowback 2. synergizes perfectly with "RTO" mandates (to the extent this needed synergy to become A Widespread Thing) On that basis alone, I'll wait for further analysis. Edit: to be clear I'm no anti-AI holdout, and I actually d…

> The way this position conforms to the interests of the capital class, and conflicts with those of the labor class, is a red flag.

If being in the office conforms to the interest of the capital class, it implies that WFH is inherently less efficient.

This is one of those things that I often find strange with work from home advocates. They seem to imply that business owners just want employees to suffer as a goal in itself.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#17

Post by grolingor »

flextheruler wrote: post #10
steviedotboston wrote: post #8

I couldn't imagine working remote straight out of college. I'm very glad I work remote now though.

Yeah it's awful and the lack of any sympathy from people further along in their career with kids made it even worse. Everyone thinks it's great but I literally developed depression and anxiety from isolation.

Should those other people be made to RTO and spend less time around their kids, to fill in your isolated lifestyle?

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#18

Post by kxrm »

mattdeboard wrote: post #5

The way this position conforms to the interests of the capital class, and conflicts with those of the labor class, is a red flag. It simultaneously and conveniently: 1. takes the heat off AI blowback 2. synergizes perfectly with "RTO" mandates (to the extent this needed synergy to become A Widespread Thing) On that basis alone, I'll wait for further analysis. Edit: to be clear I'm no anti-AI holdout, and I actually d…

It also doesn't really sit well with what I have observed in over 25 years of working for remote companies. We hired juniors and grew engineers up just fine. The problem, at least at orgs I have worked at in the last decade, is companies no longer want to invest in junior hires.

I have been fortunate to have a C-level above me, who believes in hiring juniors, take over in the last year. We are hiring now and mentoring, but not enough companies around me are doing this.

Re: What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?

#19

Post by pqtyw »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #11
uxhacker wrote: post #4

I have found working with remote first natives that the narrowness of their knowledge is also very high. When you work in an office there is a some knowledge transfer happening having lunch with the guy in accounts or the women in the sales team. This non structured learning is missed in remote work.

I don't fully agree. If the only way information and cross-pollination is through in-office water-cooler conversation, that's an organizational smell. If you have most of the work and conversation is done in public, you're not hiring very curious people.

What other options are there? Confluence pages and public Slack channels or some sort of organized events? Its not even remotely the same..

It's not like there are that many natural opportunities to meet and interact with people you don't directly work with when everyone is remote.

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