The trick here is to have a senior person pester them constantly for voice calls and screen sharing sessions (both ways).
How to set junior employees up for success in remote
291–300 of 370 posts
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, I used to be more productive WFH when I was already acclimated on a team. When I joined a new team and it turned fully remote, my productivity dropped and it took me longer to come up to speed than if I were in the office.
My opinion is that the issue arises because of expectations and formalities that occur in remote environments over in person. When I'm remote, every email I type, message I send, Jira update, commit comment, etc. are etched in stone for reference in all of perpetuity, time stamped and all. There's an unspoken expectation to be informed and expert in all things in many work environnments to avoid looking "incompetent"…
I definitely agree - the level of formality is significantly increased, even over Slack, because of the "permanence" you referenced.
I switched teams 4 months ago (old team dissolved in a merger) into an area where I don't have any experience (Django backend -> "DevOps-y" microservices in Go and infrastructure type stuff). These are skills I want to possess and I was grateful for the opportunity. Unfortunately the outcome has not been what I had hoped. I'm trying hard to teach myself but I'm missing so much. My teammates are all significantly more senior and are extremely busy. My experience and reputation in other areas feels like it actually hurts me -- am I not actually a competent programmer, like I thought I was?
Worse is I feel worried about switching teams again. What if I don't succeed there, either? Will I need another 4-6 months to ramp up and gain knowledge? I don't want to end up a pariah, or be seen as an incompetent developer who can't be relied upon.
I'm applying to jobs at other companies now. I know I'll face many of the same challenges there as well, but I don't really know what else to do.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#293"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.
From the HN Guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." I don't think a personal attack is most generous interpretation of their post. I would add some nuance. I've increasingly come to the conclusion that initiative is one of the best qualities in an employee. It's natural to see how having initiative wil…
If someone writes a post about struggling remotely and someone immediately follows it up with some general observation about how most people who struggle remotely weren’t going to be that great anyway it’s pretty easy for the OP to connect the dots.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#294Earlier 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…
> an always open video chat What.
This most likely doesn’t mean that every person has their camera on 24/7, the setups I’ve seen have a “room” that is always open then people can enter and leave whenever.
Tools like Remotion or the virtual office apps with spatial sound and movable avatars also aim to lower the friction and make informal chats easier.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#295While 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.
Perhaps because people are starting to draw their own conclusions after working remotely for 24 months?
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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-b…
At the same time, being able to maintain productivity while handling questions is a skill in of its own. I work on a team building/maintaining internal tools/infra and a large part of my job is interfacing with other teams and maintaining productivity on my own work at the same time is a big part of my responsibility.
So it cuts both ways.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#297I knew a company that would make junior employees keep a permanent zoom window open with their manager. Sounded terrible for both sides.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Utterly nonsense. How about children learning from home via a laptop? Doesn't work. Same for people who need to be trained in a new work environment. You want real interaction. You need to experience more than only sound and video in order to learn efficient. It's extremely wrong to think that good performers can always do these things from home. Not right.
I joined my company straight out of college and it was during covid peak, it was totally remote and guess what, last week my manager called me and told me that I've been promoted with a salary hike(within less than a year). If you've discipline and commitment you can make anything work. :)
Congrats, but do you ever wonder if it would've been faster/easier in person?
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
No other industry has salaries that rise this fast. I tripled my salary over about 5 years going from Junior -> Senior (experienced) -> Team lead. Quadrupled if you count the 6 months I did as a trainee.
Re: How to set junior employees up for success in remote
#300For 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.
Common advise is to ask for help but like how? Everyone is busy around me!