How to set junior employees up for success in remote

I work in (state) government as well, and I'm noticing the same. Our institution is definitely like what you mention - "find your own work" kind of deal. It _sounds_ good until you are basically expected to find your own billable hours in Month 1.

My wife actually works in the same institute as I do, but in a different wing - my experience vastly differs from hers. I am basically full-time on one project with consistent billable codes, and she's expected to shop around to try to find projects with open hours, so she can get her 40 hours in every week.

She comes from the private sector, so she's admittedly put off by that idea, especially not really knowing anyone and not being well-versed in academic research as a career. I couldn't imagine being put in that position as my first position out of college.

I've been saying this for over 2 years now, and especially seen this in action with teams in my own company which are a good mix of junior and senior folks.

- Junior folks on average spend longer being stuck before reaching out. We organized a few physical offsites where the whole team got together in-person and that helped reduce the friction quite a bit because folks interacted with each other outside of just "We need to get X done" which naturally happens because we never really got to know folks outside of "planned" onboarding/weekly/standup etc. Zoom calls.

- I learnt A LOT of Dev setup looking over shoulders of devs much better than me, be it interesting keyboard shortcuts, learning how to use tmux for split screen, ssh tricks, vim/emacs setups etc. which in the long term made me a better dev. A lot of this is not "mandatory" to know but every dev builds his/her own style of working by absorbing from those around them.

- Lot more friendships/mentorships/team-spirit were created in in-person settings than in remote where everyone feels a lot more "replaceable". Sure, some folks probably prefer it this way, but I'm certain I'm not the only person who wants to look at work as "just something I do to make money" but also a place where I build meaningful relationships and work with smart folks to build something great together while also having fun (which have also helped me when switching between companies and having folks I know already there).

Personally, as someone with enough experience building software, I'm at a place where working remote is the "best case scenario" for me because it gives me complete control of my time, but I absolutely see the tradeoff on the other hand for the folks on the other end.

I think there is something to this - as a junior you can learn a lot through osmosis just by being around seniors and more experienced people. This doesn't just apply to software or tech - I have a friend that works for a bank that says just having new members of his team be within earshot so they can hear how he talks to clients and partners on the phone is a useful learning experience for them.

However, my experience pre-Covid was that the office was where I was the least productive. My team was already spread out across many office locations, so virtual meetings over Teams were already a thing. The company I worked for at the time had shifted to an open floor plan but without an adequate amount of conference rooms, so often for these virtual meetings we would all be dialed in at our desk, despite 4-6 of us on the call sitting right next to each other. Of course this created echo so meetings were a constant game of muting/unmuting and minimizing how much you talked to avoid feedback.

Working remotely did not require a shift in tools at all, but instead has made these calls much more pleasant to attend and easier to engage in.

> no source code on your laptop

Cybersecurity policies and work from home has always been extraordinarily strange to me.

Optical character recognition exists. Big Corp, trust me, if I wanted to steal your stuff, I'd have it already.

Stop locking my laptop down, we both know that's mostly a scare tactic.

Supporting jr engineers comes with some specific needs IMO, regardless of remote or onsite :

1. Senior engineer time is the main constraint, in the sense, more experienced engineers need to be available to mentor them and break down tasks, concepts etc 2. clarity of purpose / problem being solved (related to #1) 3. feeling safe, and ready to ask questions - have some kind of 'office hours' on a daily basis

In an office environment , there are opportunities for hallway chats, in addition to physical meetings (where there is increased incentive/pressure for the jr. engineer to bring up questions).

The remote jr. engineer also feels left alone, since seniors are busy. Seniors usually have tenure, so know the background, and are empowered with lots of info.. they can plough ahead, the breakdown of tasks is relatively tractable.. but not for Jrs.

An Org needs to create a daily 'win' potential for them to take them forward .. instead it becomes for each his/her his own (shell).