How to set junior employees up for success in remote • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by scottLobster » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

barrysteve wrote: post #249

scottLobster wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've seen this pattern recently outside of software. This kind of "tribal capture" lead to mediocrity and nepotism. The untouchable tribal leaders fostered an environment where unpleasant roles were left understaffed until 'lower people' were subtly manipulated into taking them, who then left. It created a revolving door of staff that otherwise would have made good contributions. Management in response to the turn ov…

Yeah that accurately describes my workplace as well. The revolving door of "lower people" you mention is very real. I'm one of those "lower people" and I've definitely been shifted into the work no one else wants. To be fair I was fresh out of college and took the "volunteer for the work no one wants to earn respect" route, and it did earn me some respect, even a promotion and a pay bump. But after a couple of years of trying to push further it's clear there's a ceiling, and my only chance of doing any of the interesting work is waiting for the old men to retire/leave, and then I'll likely be dumped into the deep end to figure things out myself, under extreme time pressure because critical stuff's breaking and I have 25% of the knowledge necessary to fix it, which makes me the remaining program "expert" :P

I'm sticking around for personal/defensive reasons (it's stable and recession-proof, and I have a one-month old so moving would be extra stressful for the family), but I doubt I'll stick around for more than another year or two. My turn for that revolving door is coming up

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

#322

Post by ospzfmbbzr » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

mgfist wrote: post #290

ospzfmbbzr wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enviro…

I don't think I'm missing the point... it's just that those seem like excuses and self-employed or self-directed workers are only making these excuses to themselves (as they fail).

> 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.

I dealt with every one of these in varying degrees at one point or another. I still miss watercooler talk with interesting people but you can't have everything.

If YOUR environment isn't conducive to getting work done -- fix it!

- Inside too much? Get a dog or a hobby outside. (work is not a life) - Miss people? get a hobby where you meet people (work is not a life) - etc..

Who's responsibility is it to fix? YOURS (unless you want to fail but I guess at least you can blame someone else?)

Now it's not easy to do these things... but nothing worthwhile is easy.

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

#323

Post by lettergram » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #234

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…

It's so easy to conflate "top performers" with "people like me". Take someone who points out flaws in a system, things that need to be addressed before they become a problem. The exact same words from two different people can be interpreted differently. For example: - "X is a top performer who anticipates problems with their deep understanding of the system"; and - "Y is negative and simply points out problems rather…

It’s not hard to implement a system which measures success.

For one, we ensure everyone commits and delivers and holds others accountable for failures. What you’re describing is not a measurement of performance, I see your point though.

I too very much disdain “team bonding”. But the point is to get to know and respect each other. By doing so you’re more likely to hold yourself accountable.

In terms of performance there’s two parts:

1. How much you commit to

2. How much you deliver on commitments

We expect 100% on #2 or explanations and plans to adjust. On #1 we expect that to change as you increase through the ranks. Junior members don’t need to commit to as much, senior more and staff should commit to a lot and help the junior.

Top performance is learning what you can accomplish and delivering, communicating when you’re having trouble, and then ensuring improvement over time in terms of committing to more.

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

#324

Post by AndrewKemendo » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

Overall great advice, however if it only works under the following conditions then it's not really usable advice:

>New hires need to join a stable squad, where senior team members can take time to onboard and support them

>Limit the number of junior employees to a certain % of your workforce: sounds harsh, but in a remote team, especially a startup, resources are limited. Don't stretch managers too thin.

These points makes this advice not-actionable because by and large, these two items are usually out of the control of their managers.

Yes, ideally a team would be well formed and competent prior to even posting a job requirement, but we know that's just not the way the world works.

"Don't hire unless you have everything in order" is great in theory but I've seen only a handful of teams in my near 20 years of experience that can claim to be in such a state.

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

#325

Post by dj_mc_merlin » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #302

macspoofing wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If my company only gave me dirty river water, sure water is good and technically I'll probably survive if it's free of parasites A single monitor is not a health hazard. For some reason people here are purposely confusing "I can't" with "I prefer not to"

It's not a health hazard, but it is a bottleneck in a very real sense if you want to keep more than one thing open (whether for reading, writing, running commands, or a combination thereof). It's not just a matter of preference.

I use a tiled window manager + emacs buffers, my 15.6" screen almost always has 2 applications open and 4 when I feel the need. Never had a problem running commands or reading documentation all at the same time.

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

#326

Post by zeroonetwothree » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

Agamus wrote: post #238

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience as a child learning from a laptop?

On that topic, no, I am referring to observing my own children learning from a laptop. I could not have been more skeptical of this approach at first. I was wrong - the approach has worked well so far. EDIT: I definitely should have mentioned that my children are learning from a laptop WITH very close guidance from my wife who is raising them full-time and with intense dedication!

Sounds like your children are actually learning from your wife.

My experience is that unsupervised education is worthless.

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

#327

Post by jmyeet » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #323

jmyeet wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so easy to conflate "top performers" with "people like me". Take someone who points out flaws in a system, things that need to be addressed before they become a problem. The exact same words from two different people can be interpreted differently. For example: - "X is a top performer who anticipates problems with their deep understanding of the system"; and - "Y is negative and simply points out problems rather…

It’s not hard to implement a system which measures success. For one, we ensure everyone commits and delivers and holds others accountable for failures. What you’re describing is not a measurement of performance, I see your point though. I too very much disdain “team bonding”. But the point is to get to know and respect each other. By doing so you’re more likely to hold yourself accountable. In terms of performance th…

> It’s not hard to implement a system which measures success.

So if I were looking to join your team and you said this it would be a huge red flag. Why? Because it's not easy or everyone would've done it already. The fact that you think it's easy really would be a cause for concern.

> For one, we ensure everyone commits and delivers ...

First sentence in and you've already added a qualitative factor. For a given task, is it "enough" to meet team expectations? This depends on how difficult it is perceived to be. Maybe there's some huge unknown unknowns. Maybe it's just really tedious and is real time gated for some reason. The standard retort is "we take that into account" but again this conflates subjective perception with objective truth.

Some people talk a very good game about how hard their job is and I've seen some very senior people skate because of this and the fact that for whatever reason they're liked (by management).

You expect 100% delivery on commitments. How is that not going to just reward under-promising? it also leads to things being half-assed. Bugs closed as "could not reproduce" or "working as intended". Features being just good enough to ship without the massive problems surfacing later. Hell, that's just another opportunity for more impact.

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

#328

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

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

Have you tried getting those people in a virtual room together?

We did a lot of getting people in a room together at my work. We changed into virtual rooms during the pandemic and they showed themselves superior in almost every way. People have decent IO devices on virtual room, as an opposition to a random laptop on the real meeting; there is no software misconfiguration stopping the work; we can do the meetings on a shorter notice (no need to travel or even book rooms); people get less tired and zoom-out less, because they are in a familiar comfortable environment, instead of shoved into an improper room without sufficient ventilation.

There is a large downside in that only one conversation line is possible for each room. That is a serious tooling drawback, but AFAIK every tool has it.

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

#329

Post by tuckerman » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #320

tuckerman wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not "can you connect the dots" but "should you connect the dots." I can frame just about any comment as an attack in one way or another, but it's not a great idea. For one, it goes against HN guidelines but, more importantly, it just doesn't seem like a very healthy mindset.

I think the fact that OP and others are taking it as a personal attack is at least a sign that we should also be mindful in how we write things.

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

#330

Post by throwthroyaboat » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

asah wrote: post #233

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…

sadly, this is my experience as well... ...but it's also true that all-superstar teams rarely win vs teams composed on superstars and supporting staff [1], and thus you can't afford to hose the supporting staff. [1] sorry I don't have a better reference - https://www.google.com/search?q=all-superstar+teams+vs+super...

Another side to this is, how possible it it actually to acquire a team of "superstars"? If you work at a big, well paying company maybe. But for anything non-FAANG, you might not have enough talent coming in that you'll be perpetually short staffed if you set the bar too high.