The group that had worked together in the office handled remote work spectacularly. New hires tended to flounder a bit compared to what we were used to.
We achieved some better results once we realized this and started putting some more specific mentorship time in with new hires.
Like in the first week their manager/lead should be meeting with them multiple times a day, then ramping down to at least once a day with screen sharing / pair programming etc. when they have questions. Plus inclusion and involvement in meetings that help provide a bigger picture of how the product works, customer needs, etc. And making sure they are introduced to many team members and know where to ask questions for the best feedback.
Of course this depends on the team, the new hire, and how things are going. But it seemed like the default case for many people was to spend hours silently not progressing when they were stuck on a problem, from dev machine setup to their first assigned tasks. Getting dumped into a Slack instance with dozens of channels and hundreds of people can certainly be overwhelming and being guided through these first steps seemed to help a lot.
I think it’s completely possible to give a new dev the same kinds of experience and mentorship, but with remote work that has to be done more deliberately. In a close office environment a lot of that happened via natural interaction and osmosis without anything needing to be scheduled on a calendar.