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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

#281

Post by greatpostman »

lettergram wrote: post #101
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 engin…

This sounds terrible and I would leave this team fast. I work in a high performing FAANG team. Deadlines get pushed all the time

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

#282

Post by bumby »

bmitc wrote: post #151
lettergram wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think anyone who can’t work well remote, on average, will not be your top performers anyway. I don’t think that’s the case at all. One could say a similar thing in that it enables the worst employees who can drag down so-called top performers. But I don’t like any of these framings. I personally prefer working in the office. I’m more productive, focused, and able to check in with someone or go grab them and show…

>I’m more productive, focused, and able to check in with someone or go grab them and show them an issue I’m having.

I think there's an important distinction here. It may be more productive for you but not necessarily for the team. You grabbing another employee may increase your productivity but subvert theirs. Anecdotally, my personal productivity goes way up when I work remote because I don't have all the "drive-by" questions that erode my focused work time. Whether or not that makes the team more or less productive may be a factor team dynamics and contributions.

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

#283

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

parksy wrote: post #138
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…

As a senior developer, if working just in the office as was expected in the past I was distracted by things like a story about the weekend two colleagues are having in the background that sounds amusing, or the junior developer constantly spinning around on his chair to ask a question about something because "you're there". I always had time for that kind of thing but my productivity suffered and I was always frustra…

I think COVID is an atypical representation of life with WFH. We also cut off a lot of other human contact as we were encourage to isolate and avoid contact. Even as an extreme introvert I found it got to me a bit at times, but I'm finding that now that I feel OK doing things again this has faded.

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

#284

Post by bumby »

greatpostman wrote: post #281
lettergram wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This sounds terrible and I would leave this team fast. I work in a high performing FAANG team. Deadlines get pushed all the time

Does one ever question why deadlines constantly get pushed? At best, it means those high performers are bad at setting initial deadlines. Or is it that meeting deadlines isn't considered a performance metric?

Now if deadlines are important, maybe it's just relative performance that you're speaking to. So if everyone misses deadlines you can still be high-performing, but it's like saying you're the skinniest kid at fat camp. It's normalization of deviance, and not a trait of high performing teams.

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

#285

Post by bornfreddy »

scottLobster wrote: post #173
lettergram wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In defense of remote work underperformers in general, I work for a company with a lot of tribal knowledge. It shouldn't be that way, but that's how the company operates and our pleas for time/money to write adequate internal documentation fall on deaf ears (doesn't help that it's legacy software so there's not many people capable of writing said documentation). Result is there are a few wise old (as in 15-20+ years e…

Interesting. This aligns with my past experience as well. If I may ask, are you / is the company working on rectifying this, and if so, how?

What we did was that we made our internal docs and agreed that whenever we were blocked by something, once we learned it, we would document it. It was a mixed success though because we never had time to work on the docs properly, and the veterans didn't touch it, so I'm curious if there is a better approach.

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

#286

Post by akhmatova »

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.

The bountiful blind arrogance I have come to expect from threads like this on HN.

I didn't read it that way at all. The commenter was simply relating their observation of how remote works well for some co-workers, but not for others -- as they see it.

That's all. It seems you're reading way too much into that observation.

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

#287

Post by leetrout »

MattGaiser wrote: post #261
leetrout wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over the last decade, I've seen less and less mentoring. I've seen a lack of willingness be mentored / coached. Not directly of folks I have worked with but as a bystander. There's not one clear reason but there is an overtone of entitlement.

>I've seen a lack of willingness be mentored / coached. What do you mean by this? They were arrogant?

Yes. Not showing up to office hours, willfully disregarding advice / tips on working with the team.

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

#288

Post by pyb »

prepend wrote: post #201
sweetheart wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pair programming is a fantastic tool. Why the snark?

I like pair programming and think I learned a ton by being the junior “driving” while the senior was “navigating.” But I’ve also had some nightmare scenarios with people who just massively slack and do nothing. I worked with someone who wanted to “navigate” in 10/10 sessions and never said anything. They just watched me do stuff, didn’t respond to questions, didn’t work on docs, didn’t look stuff up. It was weird. Mi…

That's why people should not be forced to pair program. (and I personally favor pairing)

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

#289

Post by pyb »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #130
l30n4da5 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like you didn't even read my post, just looked for the hook to drop in and proclaim your superiority. Seemed to me it was just a counter-point to your post. If you don't have anything productive to add, that's fine, but resorting to personal attacks doesn't really make your argument/viewpoint look better. From my own personal experience, I'd mirror what the previous poster said. Most of the top performers in a…

Quoted post unavailable.

Agree that it was poor form of lettergram to non-sequitur your post, as an opportunity to bash their own colleagues. This kind of interaction is normally more prevalent on Twitter than it is here.

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

#290

Post by mgfist »

ospzfmbbzr wrote: post #197
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Not personal unless you take it that way -- instead take it as a challenge and show him he was wrong about you. Programming well is difficult and takes time and effort to get good at, but it's worth it. Being junior and learning while remote is not ideal at all. I work very well remotely but only because everything is second nature to me now after so many years. If that makes me a 'top performer' then it's only becau…

You're totally missing the original point.

> I work very well remotely but only because everything is second nature to me now after so many years.

This is coming from the narrow view that people who struggle remotely only do so because they are inexperienced. I know people who struggled because they lived in a small NYC apartment where their desk was 2 feet from their bed, and the lack of movement or change of environment was killer mentally. I know people who struggled because they are highly extroverted and not seeing people IRL led to crushing mental health issues. I know people who did not live up to their IRL potential because they thrive on watercooler chats for creativity. I know people who just felt disconnected remotely and didn't feel the purpose and connection to the team/company in person.

Basically, "technical ability" is not the sole reason why someone would be worse remotely than in person. Likewise there are people who feel distracted in person and need the remote solitude or get drained from the commute.

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