So more discrimination in favor of seasoned employees to come
How to set junior employees up for success in remote
161–170 of 370 posts
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#162I can not relate to this. I found my first real job after university in a medium sized company (100-200 employees). This company is a truly in-office company by heart. Before covid everybody had to go to the office. Working from home was not an option. Not even for one day. The whole culture was built around the in-person work experience. But due to covid everybody worked remote. So did I. I actually never met most o…
Let me make a bet here: You are self-taught in a lot of ways, and in your spare time also like to fool around with software development stuff. That's why you don't need hand holding. A lot of your peers do need hand holding to get stuff done. I'm a 43 year old developer, and I can work remotely without any issues. Partly because my development experience was always broader than my job alone.
> Partly because my development experience was always broader than my job alone.
I think for some of us (and me) it's really hard to fully understand this. When I was in 10th grade I was going to local meetups where I first found out about Elm (they had beer too, I guess no one expects kids to show up to a meeting held in an office building at 7pm). I still can't understand the mindset of someone whose dev experience only being limited to their jobs, but I think you did a really great job at summarizing it.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#163While 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.
It's very obvious too... of course junior employees don't do as well as veterans when you take out the entire physical support system. Like.. duh? What you need to solve this is merely competent managers/mentoring culture.
It's very obvious that people do better getting introduced to new environments and cultures when they're physically present.
Imagine thinking that a Zoom meeting with a few french people is the same as moving to Paris.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slite is a SaaS company providing tooling for remote work and is a fully remote company itself, all of that since well before the pandemic. So I think calling the article a "hit piece against remote" is unwarranted in this case. Disclaimer: I have an acquaintance who works there.
Founder of Slite here, your reply is spot on, we try to be as honest on the pros and cons of remote when we think internally of the future of this market, and when we share our research or insights outside. It's not all pink, and our mission is very much to remove the roadblocks, so we need to acknowledge the issues that prevent remote from being seen as a no brainer by some teams today.
Hey there, just wanted to say as a remote junior dev who has been at it for about 10 months now, that I appreciate the article a lot. These 10 months have been the most difficult of my life, professionally speaking. I was assigned a mentor, but there were no training exercises, or "easy bug fixes / small wording changes to make, so they can focus on learning the workflows" quite the opposite actually, and no processes explained or documented anywhere.
I'm a bit older and I couldn't imagine going through this as a fresh grad out of college. I would have loved to have had my hand held in my first days as a dev. I was constantly demoralized by not having the domain knowledge (and not having any comprehensive documentation to learn it), being assigned complicated stories (that even the mid/senior devs had trouble with), and by not having anyone just regularly check in with me and make sure I was doing ok. I would like to continue working remote indefinitely, but man it was really tough starting out as a dev remotely. I say all this to say I do think it's possible to successfully onboard a new dev remotely, but there has to be a plan and resources available to do it and I think your article is a good template.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I suspect it’s harder for a junior to succeed anywhere today vs 2012 When I was a jr engineer I was paired with some senior people who showed me the ropes. They expected it would take some time to come up to speed and intentionally worked to help me get there. They took my college degree as "proof I could learn" and then taught me what I needed to know. Over the last decade, I've seen less and less mentoring. Even…
IMHO it's turnover that's the problem. Companies get engineers for an average of like 24 months and it might be even less for junior employees. Taking the time to train someone up doesn't make as much sense when you're not going to get return on your investment.
> IMHO it's turnover that's the problem.
In software I've seen this to be a huge problem. In other disciplines my observations are that it's not as bad.
The turnover issues is something that could use a lot more exploration. Nothing is going to change until it impacts those who are distant from the front line engineers. The managers of the engineers know about the problems. The executives over them are distant from the problem.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
I brought in my favorite keyboard before to the office .. They didn't appreciate the noise but MY productivity was top that day.
Let me guess, kinesis?
hhkb pro2! It's not too bad, but you really appreciate the value of lubricating your switches when you're conscious about the sound!
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a lot easier for me to observe a junior struggling, spinning their wheels, and give corrective feedback in the office. I don't know the remote equivalent of glancing at their screen and body language while I get up for a bathroom break.
Listen to what they say during the daily team meeting, and occasionally ask by chat how they're doing. It's true that it has to be a bit more explicit, and it may be a bit slower, but it's far from impossible.
It's really this simple. Junior employees need to be more actively managed than senior employees. They literally do not know what they're doing, that's what makes them junior. Remote or local, they need more oversight to help them learn and become productive.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#168This 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 engin…
Pair programming is a fantastic tool. Why the snark?
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#169I didn't read the article, but the title alone is obvious.
I am in favor of flexibility in the work place. Some people work better remotely, others work better in an office. We should let people do what's best for them.
I like working remotely, but I can't imagine being fully remote with my first professional job out of college. The foundational knowledge transfer that happens in person is invaluable. Not only that, but I find even now, as a more senior engineer with many responsibilities, at times it is hard to feel motivated when I'm fully remote. That would only be amplified as a junior engineers when you aren't a stakeholder in any projects. How can you feel inspired to want to build great things if everything is so disconnected and impersonal?
I suspect this is much better at companies that are permanently remote - they hopefully have the infrastructure in place to properly ramp up and train junior engineers. But for companies that have transitioned to remote recently, the old way of onboarding a junior employee won't work any more.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#170(quoting book) Amanda Nock, a tech leader and devops expert who posts frequently to Twitter, offered this in response when I posted on Twitter about how to hire good people remotely, “When I hire remotely, I ask about their online friends.” Nock doesn’t need the details of anyone’s online friendships, but she needs to know that the person has developed a serious friendship online; otherwise that person probably doesn…
That's a good take out of current issue. I'd say though having online friends is not necessary, but ability to follow forum conversation and initiating / joining one is a valuable experience in remote work.
I can expect that older managements are lacking in this aspect.
That being said, there's synchronous remote (similar timezone and same work hours) that can help to alleviate the remote work issue.