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Comment by greenhatman | Hacker News Reader

I've been working from home for the last 3 years. I much prefer this to sitting in traffic, even if it's just 30 minutes a day.

I wouldn't recommend this for junior devs though. You need to be around experienced people to fast track your learning.

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I'm a junior developer work at a BigCo in NYC. I don't feel like I am fast-tracking my learning by being in the office. I don't have a mentor or anyone in my office that I can learn about enterprise app dev from. There is a dev in a different office that I ping occasionally with questions, but I really do not think that I need to be in my office 5 days a week. I wonder if my situation is the rule or the exception, and if I am getting shafted by not having a professional mentor...

Eventually you would meet people and discuss technical stuff and unofficial mentor/mentee relationships may develop. Most places won't have an assigned mentor. Your boss (if he/she is technical) may become a mentor but it doesn't always happen.

Coffee/Break room chats and other social gatherings would help in building rapport with other devs and eventually you would be learning from each other. Unless the place you work is extremely toxic, I would say just give it time. My 2c.

You need to take advantage of the proximity and network! Preferably upwards. Befriending the QA guy may make your life easier now, but he's not going to be the one who can offer you a job in 5 years time.

But if the experienced people are all working from home?

I've mentored new ( already seasoned ) hires remotely. It worked well. Skype calls, instant messaging, screen sharing, code reviews, and a genuine interest in helping were the key. I don't see any reason this wouldn't apply to mentoring less seasoned teammates, unless they do not enjoy working remotely.

I'm not so sure: if you have a well designed workflow, there should be lots of opportunities for mentoring.

Relatedly, I would design a 100% colocated team around basically the same workflow as a 100% distributed team.

I've seen people gain skills while working remote with a fully remote team. If the company culture encourages the employees to be social and talkative, you can learn as a junior dev working remotely.

Offices may still hold the upper hand here, a lot of people have mental barriers about messaging coworkers vs casually wandering by their office.

It's possible however that some juniors may take longer to reach their full potential, or perhaps never reach it at all in a remote environment. Also juniors may not have the self-introspection to perceive that the environment is not working out for them, and rather feel discouraged about their ability.

My experience tells me the opposite. Approaching a senior level guy in person can be intimidating when you're just starting out. Sending that same senior engineer a chat message on whatever what message system the company uses is considerably less nerve wracking. Also, if you don't get any response back from the people you're reaching out to, that's a culture issue not a proximity issue. Those guys would probably still blow you off if you were in the same office.

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