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Comment by schnevets | Hacker News Reader

The article describes gains made by "superstars", who can be seen as self-motivated and capable of making a big impact. I am extremely concerned about how we cultivate superstars in the remote work world.

I have been working remote for over 5 years now, but I wouldn't have survived without a lot of luck and years of experience as an intern/entry level employee at an office with some brilliant mentors.

I have tried mentoring in the same vein as those who taught me, but it hasn't caught on as well. I am concerned about how many people entering the workforce fail to reach that superstar threshold because they are missing a few key elements (which may be face-to-face interaction). I am also quickly learning that the high-impact employee does not necessarily make the best mentor.

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I entered the workforce in a very different time with very different tools which makes it hard for me to think through the counterfactual: "What if I had had to be remote when I first started working?" But I think it would have been very difficult and I might have been less successful as a result.

Even today, I feel like I'm cruising a bit on existing in-person relationships. (I was large remote pre-COVID but I still met a lot of people at in-person events and meetings.

I’m a fresh grad who has basically only worked remote (except a summer internship freshman year and TA-ing in person 2 years ago), so I’ll report back in 5 years as a counter-factual ;)

same here. i think i get plenty of mentorship with 3 one hour calls with boss weekly. as far as in person networking events, i see no reason i cannot fulfill this with traveling to conferences. a conference will be a time i go all in on networking and connecting with the industry.

We’re fully remote and have hired a few engineers out of college. They’re very independent and productive. Who knows if they’d be even better if they worked onsite, but I doubt it.

As I say, very different time. I didn't even really have email prior to entering the workplace and, while there were conference calls to manufacturing sites and the like and other (frequent) phone calls, it was a very in-person swing by offices/desks/labs sort of environment. But that's obviously different from what a fresh engineering grad has been exposed to.

those kinds of relationships don't go away even if they aren't in-person. being able to hire anyone from anywhere also comes with the risks of hiring anyone from anywhere. [smart] clients can recognize a good thing when they have it so you can still cultivate enough of those relationships to cruise, you just might use different means to do so.

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