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How to set junior employees up for success in remote

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

#271

Post by cmrdporcupine »

tomtheelder wrote: post #264
ensignavenger wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do think a lot of it is driven by personality types, but I would attribute that more to personal need for close contact and socialization. I will never thrive in a remote environment- not because I can't manage focus or work asynchronously or anything, but because it makes me extremely depressed. It's impossible to keep my productivity up as my mental state degrades.

Yeah it's very rough. Even having family in the house with me, I need outside socializing.

Even when we were able to shift back to hybrid in-person, I'd drive in the 45 minutes get to the office and find basically nobody there. It was just as isolating, but totally pointless.

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

#272

Post by geraldwhen »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #158
dev_tty01 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is why are they leaving after 24 months? Perhaps the company is lacking a clear path for development in terms of responsibility, impact, and renumeration. Not adequately training because they are expected to leave after 24 months is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's mostly because it is taboo to give a pay rise above 15% to retain someone (unless promoting) but most companies are willing to spend more than that difference on new hires to match the market rate. I am sure there is some sort of game psychology explanation on HR's behaviour and equally, from an employee perspective, the cost/inertia of following through with a job change will probably weight in HR's favor.

My company has paid double digit raises regularly. I’ve still seen people leave for internal transfers because they think the grass is greener.

Money is why a lot of young devs quit, but it’s not the only reason.

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

#273

Post by yodsanklai »

M0r13n wrote: post #59

I 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…

> I think thats because they are relatively old and never used messengers, mail, social media and co. to an extend as my generation (age I don't know the age distribution at your company and their educational background, but a lot of people under 50 have been using such systems at least all of their adult life (esp. if they work in tech). Around 1995, internet started to become mainstream. And long before that, people were using BBS.

Smartphone are newer though but I don't think they brought much to the equation. If anything, people became less tech-savvy after the emergence of smartphones.

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

#274

Post by geraldwhen »

_dain_ wrote: post #44
micromacrofoot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a raindrop in a hurricane though, the best keyboard, mouse, and monitor in the world aren't going to make someone productive in an unproductive environment.

Maybe not, but a bad set of tools can cause real problems. Strain injury, for one thing.

Exactly this. I got RSI from using bad keyboards and mice, and I won’t any more.

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

#276

Post by tristor »

I’ve been permanently remote for almost a decade. I will never go back to working in an office. Despite all this, I actually prefer working in an office because it creates team camaraderie you don’t get remotely, but commuting is so horrid that it’s not worth it. Commuting, more than anything else, makes me a hardliner for remote work.

I think you can absolutely onboard people and develop juniors remotely, but you have to be intentional about it. So many companies I’ve been at in my career did onboarding or OJT by giving out tasks and letting the employee organically learn from those around them. This process fails horribly with remote work, especially for juniors. But if you intentionally onboard people, focus on remote first, have a reading list, assign an onboarding buddy, and are up front about expectations and timelines, it’s completely workable and I’ve been at companies successfully doing this for years before WFH was commonplace.

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

#277

Post by ketzo »

closeparen wrote: post #252
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.

I think successful remote work has to take the position that asking for help 1:1 is bad, actually. * If you go through the process of figuring it out, you gain a durable understanding of the subject matter which you can use to solve other problems. * If either you (after your investigation) or the subject matter expert (on request) produces documentation of the subject, other people in the future can use this artifac…

But there's gotta be a balance.

It's totally conceivable for a new/junior employee to spend hours or days solving a problem that's already been solved in your codebase, and someone with experience could fix the issue in literally 5 minutes or less.

Yes, it's good to learn things on your own. But especially in a small environment, sometimes you gotta move faster than that.

Sometimes getting an answer 1:1 is "empty calories", and you're not learning how to solve the problem.

But that might be because the problem doesn't need to be solved, and you were wasting hours or days trying to solve it.

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

#278

Post by anon2020dot00 »

lettergram wrote: post #180
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #106

"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.

I pointed out what I’ve seen. It’s not a personal attack to say “generally people who do poorly in a remote setting lack discipline” I then provided several methods we used to increase discipline (we developed over years of trial and error). I think it’s arrogant to dismiss others experiences, particularly someone who’s managed / lived this experience for a decade (and helped setup multiple remote offices and teams).…

Remote work can affect a variety of people in different ways so a blanket statement that classifies people who struggle with remote setup as under-performers anyway comes across as too judgmental and lacking in nuance.

There are a variety of possible reasons why a person can thrive more in an office environment compared to a remote environment (and vice versa) such as maybe they have a poor remote environment due to a lack of funds. Some people might have comfy homes and a good support system at home while others may have cramped apartments and a poor home environment.

Also, the blanket statement can also be used inversely such as "generally people who do poorly in an office setting lack discipline" when maybe the person doesn't just do well in an open office or lives far away from the office with a difficult commute.

I think it's simpler to state the some people thrive in an office environment and other people thrive in remote environment for a variety of factors such as their personality and personal environment rather than to condemn those who don't thrive in either set-ups as "lacking discipline".

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

#279

Post by bumby »

prmoustache wrote: post #227
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

How is "not being a top performer" an insult? Not everyone is born/made to be a top performer at work. And that is fine, especially as it is probably the least interesting quality in a human being, especially outside of work.

My guess is this those who find it an insult are either overachievers (who have to feel like they excel at everything), or tie their personal identity to their work (and by saying they are not a top performer, the implication is have less personal worth).

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

#280

Post by strgcmc »

supergeek133 wrote: post #159

This argument has really become "what will a workplace do to accommodate/help people one way or the other". For instance, I personally prefer going to the office at least sometimes. My job satisfaction went down considerably staying at home for nearly 2 years. The fact my job had travel pre-COVID also likely had something to do with that. I enjoyed being around people, getting out of the house, etc. I'm also a huge g…

> "We're going with the times/job market, but at the same time if I got everyone involved in Problem X in a room together it would get solved in days not weeks".

I know you probably know this, but I hope your company leadership isn't falling victim to bias here, because a singular take like this implies that they think it's always better to get folks into a room... what if there is a person that, regardless of room, that your company never would've been able to hire in the first place, because you didn't support remote work?

Even if I accept a hypothetical ding to their effectiveness, I'd rather have a stellar hire working at 90% impact in a remote environment, vs not being able to hire that person at all... and of course, maybe that stellar hire actually creates 110% impact while remote, and 90% in-person, who knows?

Of course the obvious assumption is, that there are fewer stellar hires who are actively turned off by remote work, vs those that would be turned off/rejected by mandating RTO or banning remote work. That's a bet I'm willing to take, "going with the times."

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