Ask HN: Junior Engineers Working Remotely | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Junior Engineers Working Remotely

Hi there, I'm a software engineer working @ FAANG, I've been here a year, looking to switch teams to somewhere with less legacy systems.

I've met with several teams, but one in particular stood out, since the manager was saying they are a distributed team, some people are in the bay while some are based in brazil.

This is the only team I think I will find that supports fully remote work, it would be a huge relief to not have to move to an expensive cost of living area like the bay or seattle, but at the same time being fully remote I would possibly, not be able to build the same relationships as I would have in person.

Do you think not being in office will hurt my future career in a significant way as a junior engineer? I have nothing to compare it to since I joined during the pandemic, I feel like I have been productive in my single year tenure and enjoy not having to sit in traffic every day.

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The biggest change to working remote vs in-office is communication. Some organisations have done well and make sure communication is shared across all staff easily. Other organisations require proximity as you only get the full picture by overhearing random conversations. Over-hearing co-worker X is having a problem with tech Y in a different team that you used at your last employer is a great icebreaker. Knowing their area of knowledge may help you in the future with your taskings. Companies with distributed operations or that are remote only before the pandemic tend to do better, but some companies have actively transitioned and put those structures in place. Unfortunately many others have set up make do structures "until we can get back in the office".

As for helping or hurting your career, that is very dependent on your situation and the existing team structure and culture. You can overcome most negatives that come from working remote if the organisation supports you. You can also use the flexibility to improve productivity helping the organisation more. However there is more responsibility on you doing that, and some find themselves not mature enough to make the most of it.

I think it depends on your drive. I started a new role as a junior right when covid started - was in the office for maybe one week (not exaggerating), then all remote. I was later laid off (also due to covid), but found a new role at a smaller firm - still as junior, still remote - and made my way to a much more senior position in under a year. If you are confident in your skills and abilities and actually try, I think the opportunities are much much better than when we were all in the office. I found I was able to make way more progress working remotely than I ever was in the office. I also don't have children or many distractions at home, so take that as you will. It really just depends on you.

I've been a Sr. developing a Jr/ engineers in a distributed and mostly remote (technical consulting) organization for about 7 years now. It can definitely be done and IMO the "you won't learn things you get just being around Srs" meme is overstated. It can also be mitigated by lots of pairing and strong expectations on mentoring for the Srs. We've developed our talent well and those who have chosen gone to go do other things have had success outside the org, in in-person environments or remote environments.

However, if the org is not fully remote first (and sometimes even if it is) it is valuable to travel the mothership on occasion and have develop relationships in person. About one week a quarter is a good. I'd ask if they have plans and budget to do something like that.

Finally "Hybrid" teams with a majority of people spending most of their time in the office but with some remote employees can be very problematic. I'd avoid those if you can, unless you are VERY proactive and unshy about make your presence known.

There's small things you miss out when mentoring someone remotely. I learned a lot from how my seniors would use shortcuts for everything, the way they'd arrange windows on the monitor, which tabs they kept open, and the way files were arranged.

Even when I mentor juniors, often I see them struggling with an unclosed bracket and tell them to CTRL+ALT+L or CTRL+B to jump into a method. You can learn all this in courses, but sometimes it's not clear what you haven't learned.

I think a lot of people eventually come up with a workflow that works for them rather than copying others. As for keyboard shortcuts, I've found that there are certain people who will continue to use repetitive keystrokes without ever considering there's a quicker way to accomplish what they're doing and others will spend time learning the keyboard shortcuts, macro usage, regular expressions, etc to make themselves more efficient regardless of whether they've been mentored or not.

If the org does remote pair programming that kind of thing does get transferred.

It all depends on how your lead (manager/RA/whatever you call him) manages the team. If everything is on the cloud and sensible 'pairs' are maintained with a practical CI (minus all the ridiculous performance metrics bloatware) behind good repositories, then you have lost nothing. Office space is overrated and makes sense only when micromanagement is essential (that IMHO should never be the case).

What do you mean by “pairs” in this context? Pair programming, or something less strict but similar in working style?

just ask the manager. Being in the office will reduce the availability of free croissants but if you can pull your weight, and you feel confident in that, just go for it.

1 year seems a bit early to me personally but just go for it. The UFOs are coming anyways so might as well give it a shot.

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