Mentoring someone remotely is no harder than doing it in person.
With WFH entry level people everywhere can gain access to the industry. No longer do they need to move or already live in SF, NY…
But there's nothing natural or ancient about going in to the office as a rite of passage - it's not necessary. It's just something this generation won't get to have, just like my generation didn't have to go through the ritual of getting our first proper business suit, and how direct deposit has taken away the moment of being physically handed a paycheck. But they'll have their own things, I'm sure. Maybe the defining moment will be when that Fedex driver arrives and you sign for your first work laptop? Maybe logging onto the corporate slack and seeing all the channels for the first time imparts some sense of shared purpose?
And maybe that means you also don't get artificially seduced by the trappings of the environment. Because the work is done in a serious building with serious glass conference rooms and serious desks, we learn to take the business seriously - maybe more seriously than it deserves. And maybe people who work in offices typing on computers every day do think a bit too much of themselves, because after all they work in an important building full of important people. Perhaps it's a good thing to miss out on that ego-stroking. Harder to take yourself too seriously when you're working on an Ikea desk at the foot of your bed surrounded by your own dirty laundry.
What's sad is that since expectations are lower for junior people, and since the industry has embraced the idea that virtually all traditional management responsibilities in software engineering should be left for engineers to figure out themselves, new employees can hang around for months without anyone caring that nobody has put any effort into making them productive, which stunts their growth and desensitizes them to being helpless and useless.
Eventually effective onboarding for fully remote employees will become the norm, but meanwhile, a lot of people are falling through the cracks.
The big problem is that there's a bar to meet for Zoom which is higher than that to ask a question in the office. Rightly or wrongly, lots of people feel this way, and I ended up having to over-schedule meetings to make sure people got support.
Additionally, junior people are much, much less likely to have the space to make WFH effective, so they do benefit from having an office.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of WFH, but I'm pretty sceptical of it working for junior people as well as it does for senior. And even then, that difference will cause a bunch of problems.
Speaking up on Zoom may have a higher barrier to entry than in an in person meeting (maybe) but asking questions on Slack is much lower.
The great thing about remote first, is that a lot of communication is written and can be referenced in the future, which is a great boon to juniors.
This is probably the key, to be honest. The companies where I've done this were not fully remote. I agree with you that conditional on being selected for a fully-remote company, this is fine. My understanding is that these companies tend not to hire as many juniors though, am I incorrect?
Speaking for myself, I’ve always hired a good mix of jr/sr people. I do always look for devs that have the proven ability to ship (so jr devs with a GitHub project for instance).
Another factor I haven't seen much discussion of is people with vs without children. WFH with children presents a whole new slew of challenges.
I think some of the inequality comes not from the demands of the job itself but from where people are in life.
I've been working remotely for 10 years, so I bought my house because it had a home office. My WFH setup is very comfortable, and it works well for my family.
But early in my career, I was renting a cheap apartment with multiple roommates, and it was not as ideal for remote work. And I likely would have missed out on networking opportunities and just general friendships versus someone doing the same role in-office. Those aren't as important to me at this stage of my career, but they were very important back then.
The big reason for this, I think, is that the whole team is remote. Since everyone communicated via zoom, and everything is coordinated online, they can slip into the team seamlessly.
I think the upcoming blended teams are going to make this more difficult. My org, like most, is pushing for two days in the office, three days remote, but a few of our hired are geographically distant, so they will always be remote.
I'm worried that they're going to start to feel isolated from the team.
I'm at least in the same city: It would be a severe PITA if I had to FedEx my laptop back to the depot.