Comment by alright_scowl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alright_scowl | Hacker News Reader

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Some talking points are repeated ad exhaustion as if they were absolute truths, when they are largely relative:

- People collaborate better in person: Bullshit, a lot of developers collaborate better through text. Code Reviews, code snippets on Slack, quick screen shares, diagrams. In fact, verbal communication is very inefficient, prone to inaccuracy and misunderstandings.

- Junior developers don't get mentoring: Bullshit. Most developers are self learners (that's how most people learn to code anyway). Plenty of great material online, from tutorials, to stack overflow, to Indian dudes doing videos on YouTube. Mentoring is largely overblown, and can still happen through text,

- Humans are social beings and need human interaction: Bullshit. Many developers are introverts. And if you are not, find ways to socialize outside of work. Find a hobby with a community or a meetup close to whwre you live. Anything, from tabletop games, running, playing soccer, magic the gathering. Do a language class on your free time, go to a music concert, anything. When you are remote, the world is your oyster.

Disclaimer: work at AWS

For the record I'd prefer a work environment that's closer to maybe 1-2 times a month in the office.

> Most developers are self learners (that's how most people learn to code anyway)

I don't think that's true. If you poll the vast majority of people in intro to CS class, most people never coded before. I recall it being a small minority at least back when I was in school (> 10 years ago).

There's also stats comparing before WFH and after of how long long it takes someone to onboard properly/be productive (forget the exact stat/KPI, mix of survey/commit stats?) and it's extended by a few months. Now that might be due to bad on-boarding since it wasn't a remote-first, but if that still exists years later it is interesting

> People collaborate better in person: Bullshit, a lot of developers collaborate better through text

Agree with that. I really wish we would write better docs and have more of an async setup

I do genuinely think there's aspect/learning that is lost/slower in the last few years, but that might be because we haven't really thought about accepting "remote-first" and trying to shoehorn what we already had into WFH model.

> I don't think that's true. If you poll the vast majority of people in intro to CS class, most people never coded before. I recall it being a small minority at least back when I was in school (> 10 years ago).

I remember my time in college. From my experience, many of my peers there also didn't know how to code after taking classes. The ones that learned were the ones that invested the time to learn. The classes were there to speed it up things only.

> If you poll the vast majority of people in intro to CS class, most people never coded before.

yeah, and they are the generally low performers that waste other peoples time.

Passionate people do just fine WFH. So hire them.

> Most developers are self learners

This was true 15 years ago and is still true now in the top talent areas, but it's false in the larger world.

Most of this vast sea of mediocre factory produced developers haven't done any coding outside of school and work.

> Many developers are introverts.

Another thing that was more true a decade ago. Most developers I've seen in person need social interaction and half get little of it apart from their office.

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