How to set junior employees up for success in remote • Hacker News Board

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#101

Post by lettergram » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #46

This is not a surprise to me. I think it also applies to some people who are senior and new on a project or team. Or people with a more synchronous working style. I think remote has been toxic to productivity in all sorts of companies and for all sorts of people. I think there's in general a "personality type" that does really well with remote in a certain kind of job and thrives with fairly asynchronous disconnected…

I think anyone who can’t work well remote, on average, will not be your top performers anyway.

What I mean by that — as a manager and one of the senior engineers, I had insight across our organization to projects and employee performance.

Those who thrived being remote were those who already were the top performers. Those who were followers; who lacked discipline, failed faster and more obviously. Most software engineers produce more effort than they’re worth and skate by with meetings, “pair programming”, etc

When the lockdowns started, my team at the time were some of the top performers. I had already had a remote team and we knew how to screen for it and manage it.

Some things we employed - weekly syncs across team members, an always open video chat, daily stand ups amongst projects, fun days where we’d play games online, etc. The most effective thing we implemented was holding people accountable to their deliverables. People commit to their work and tell us when it’ll be done, if they fail we talk about it as a team. Team members quickly learn they must deliver and if they need help ask. We don’t delay timelines and I expected a clear “I think this will take days” if they need to delay, that’s fine, but they explain publicly and ask for help.

That quickly led to discipline and we’d pair senior engineers with junior engineers to improve.

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#102

Post by criddell » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #35

_dain_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's penny wise, pound foolish thinking. A good keyboard and mouse and monitor for your developers (who directly earn you revenue) is not going to break the bank. But the lack of them will reduce productivity and morale, possibly even causing (on the margin) some talented people to leave. RSI and posture problems are no joke! In other industries you need immense capital investment in equipment for workers to be pro…

Your comment reminds me of all the people screeching about their good school district, as if it is somehow capable of covering for them if they choose to be a crap parent. In both cases the stuff people are fussing over is basically a rounding error compared to the big factors. Beyond some basic utility, e.g. being able to compile the code in under 5min, the hardware one uses is of negligible impact to their success.…

Don Norman has has found that attractive things work better[1]. While it’s not exactly the same, I think giving your employee some freedom to choose the gear they use is probably money well spent.

[1]: https://jnd.org/emotion_design_attractive_things_work_better...

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#103

Post by staticassertion » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

bigDinosaur wrote: post #33

staticassertion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "duh" but this is pretty controversial and there's a big push for remote work right now. I'm "pro remote" - my company is full remote, for example. I also think I'd have a much worse career if my first job hadn't been in an office, especially such a cool office with great coworkers to chat with. Being in an office was incredibly motivating and exciting as a junior developer. Being in an office also made it cl…

Conversely, I despise my first in-office experience and it completely turned me off ever going into an office ever again. It was incredibly demotivating to go there when I didn't actually need to - and the idea of 'watercooler creativity' is something I found to be a lie in an office environment. I've developed a real hatred for in-office work as a result of seeing how unnecessary it was when I went remote for two ye…

Of course, I'm sure many people have had similar experiences to both of us. I'm only saying that there's a lot of grey area here.

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#104

Post by Saint_Genet » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

slackfan wrote: post #7

For junior engineers it's really easy to fall into the trap of trying to solve everything themselves instead of asking for help when they are remote. I say this as somebody who has spent the last five years working remote team-based gigs.

One problem with being a new employee, junior or not, is that it's hard to know who to ask or has worked on something similar before when you don't really even know your coworkers. The thing I miss most when WFH is overhearing relevant information. Teams dailies do not really solve that problem.

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#105

Post by slowmotiony » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

Icathian wrote: post #2

While I can understand some of the arguments made about juniors getting some extra benefit from having everything close to hand, the sheer pace of the hit pieces against remote the last month or so is hilarious and very telling.

My guess is now that BlackRock and other funds already bought out all the empty office buildings at a bargain, they'd really like the demand to come back so they can sell them off for twice the price.

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#106

Post by cmrdporcupine » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

"I think anyone who can’t work well remote, on average, will not be your top performers anyway."

Ah, there it is, the bountiful blind arrogance I have come to expect from threads like this on HN. It's like you didn't even read my post, just looked for the hook to drop in and proclaim your superiority.

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#107

Post by _wldu » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

CodeSgt wrote: post #25

Question for anyone who's had to onboard/train Jr's in a 100% remote environment, what's worked for you? How do you maximize their chances of success? What are some common pain points? This has been an issue at my org and we're having a hard time improving it.

Be clear on what is expected. Have weekly deliverables and weekly team meetings. Don't micromanage them or have them meet each day. Get them off to a good start (give them all the gear and info they need to do the job) and be very explicit in what is expected. Give them a few weeks to get acclimated, then hold them accountable.

Whether they are remote or in the office, they can be successful. If they are getting their deliverables in on time and do things the way they are asked to do them (follow these simple rules)... that's all that matters.

And when I say follow the rules, I mean that I don't care if they use vim, emacs, nano, Wordpad, Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc. But I do care about how they submit a merge request and whether or not they PGP sign their commits.

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#108

Post by ZetaZero » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:38 PM UTC

lozenge wrote: post #48

ZetaZero wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, an expensive keyboard/mouse/monitor isn't necessary for a junior to succeed. Plenty of coders learned on much worse.

Feeling valued is necessary for a junior. They deserve the same three monitors everybody else gets.

But they are getting the same junk as everyone else...

" Everything is “reservable equipment” of garbage monitors, windows keyboards, and 400 dpi mice."

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#109

Post by malfist » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

ensignavenger wrote: post #94

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #46

This is not a surprise to me. I think it also applies to some people who are senior and new on a project or team. Or people with a more synchronous working style. I think remote has been toxic to productivity in all sorts of companies and for all sorts of people. I think there's in general a "personality type" that does really well with remote in a certain kind of job and thrives with fairly asynchronous disconnected…

I wonder if it is really so much down to just personality, or if training, process changes, and better tools could largely ameliorate the differences? I have a hunch that as more work shifts remote, new ways of working will evolve.

What a lot of people don't realize is offices are largely a by product of industrialization. Prior to that, most operations were either family ran and ran out of a home, or even when a company employed non-family members, they often paid piece work. So the employee would work from home, and then deliver their work to their employer and get paid per piece they produced.

What's old will be new again.

Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote

#110

Post by macspoofing » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #30

ZetaZero wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, an expensive keyboard/mouse/monitor isn't necessary for a junior to succeed. Plenty of coders learned on much worse.

100% disagree. I will NOT be productive at a desk if you put me in front of a single monitor, period. That has been the case since I first tried a dual screen in a professional setting and realised the benefits. A related note is that I loathe garbage keyboards. If you make me type on some garbage rubber-dome with unbalanced and scratchy keys, I will not be happy.

>I will NOT be productive at a desk if you put me in front of a single monitor, period.

Give me a break. Software development has been going on for decades now on all kinds of hardware (how did all those Software developers survive all these years??).

You can be productive and get your work done on a single monitor, you just prefer dual monitors.