Comment by tnel77 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tnel77 | Hacker News Reader

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I didn’t know it wasn’t possible to mentor junior employees remotely. It’s impossible to assign a mentor, actively check-in on their progress, encourage collaboration, etc. over a computer.

I guess I’ll have to tell the junior I’m mentoring that we are doomed.

Annnnnnyways, I’ve been having a great time mentoring a junior engineer at my company. We regularly meet to discuss his work and I constantly stress “please bother me if you have questions.” I reach out once a day to ensure he’s good to go and he often reaches out a few times a day for questions. We assign him work that is challenging, but within his skill set and abilities.

In summary, anyone saying juniors will suffer either has no idea how to mentor remotely or are just lazy. Adapt or die.

Edit: I will add that my company flies all remote employees into the office once a year for the sole purpose of team building. We did our hackathon in person and focused on building those bonds that can help people work better together. It’s technically optional, but who wants to turn down a free mini-vacation?

The lessons from academia suggest that some students thrive in a remote environment, while others completely fall to pieces. It could be that teachers fear losing their jobs to technology if they are not a prominent fixture in an in-person classroom, thus making that up, but it is also quite plausible that different people are actually different.

Finding a student/junior who is able to do well in your business environment at a distance does not imply that it is scalable across all workers businesses need to hire.

Very few business environments are remote though. Almost every one is hybrid, practically all of them if you consider the ones that were in-person or hybrid before the pandemic. Looking at the comments in this thread, too many people seem to be arguing against a "mandatory remote work" strawman.

If you truly need an in-person job or employee, you can find one.

> people seem to be arguing against a "mandatory remote work" strawman.

Not at all. Even if there was such a thing as "mandatory remote work", that does not preclude going to an office. Remote work allows working from anywhere.

The premise is that, absent of job obligation, there is little reason for the seniors to show up at the same place as the juniors. If such obligation is placed on them then you have an RTO mandate.

> I didn’t know it wasn’t possible to mentor junior employees remotely.

Might be possible, but most can't do it from what I've seen.

So if you go full wfh your pool of people who can mentor shrinks by a large factor (4x is my bet).

IMO most people can't mentor effectively to begin with, its simply a little more obvious when its remote.

This is solved by having a structured mentorship program and guidelines, and really good onboarding.

Of course, this means businesses have to invest in this sort of thing, and of course, they don't, because they implicitly got it for free by having seniors covering for juniors for so many decades it obfuscated the problem

Way back (talking multiple decades) on my first day at $JOB, my manager took me on a walk and introduced me to about 30 other engineers across multiple teams. A bit of smalltalk and bit of shop talk with each one. I still connect to 15 out of those individuals even today. I wish there was a way to replicate that for the remotes these days, because I felt that was pretty awesome.

There are, like remote happy hours, travel blocks, team get togethers etc.

These are solved / solvable issues. Socialization at work can be facilitated in a myriad of ways, even remotely. Games are popular way of doing it, virtual happy hours, team building activities etc.

Remote happy hours are hard because everyone is at the same audio volume /distance.

I wish I could emulate walking-over-there on zoom

you could use fluid rooms in Zoom, lets you go in and out to talk to someone

There needs to be a normalization of "peeling off" the main chat room

There are. I admit to finding them annoying for the most part and I usually avoid.

I (generally) haven't heard people saying it's impossible, but it absolutely adds friction.

It undeniably takes more effort for me to reach out via Slack than it does for me to swing by a cubicle. Maybe I have gotten lucky with my experience, but I plan on continuing to mentor new hires. It’s certainly possible that I’ll change my opinion as I get a larger sample pool, but I’m happy with the experience so far.

I used to kind of think this, but for me reaching out slack has turned into something I really appreciate. I can asynchronously ask someone to get in touch with me. they do when they are ready. i dont interrupt them. i can continue doing other things. there is no set meeting time, we can just have a little chat with zero effort, say goodbye and go back to work.

at the end of the day after doing this I do feel more tired, but I get plenty of self-scheduled productive little discussions.

I've mentored someone remotely and it seems to have gone pretty well. Doesn't hurt that they person is very good. And, yes, chat is invaluable.

I still feel you're losing something without in-person (including social) interaction. I know for me personally, I would say I have much weaker connections to many people I've never met in person. That said, there are a bunch of other factors involved with building new connections as well that aren't purely about being virtual.

You only like it now because salaries haven't adjusted to the fact that the pool of candidates who can do you job goes up considerably if you are full-time remote. Long-term, wages will stagnate as opportunities in non-USA countries open up. There is no reason for your company to pay you a USA salary if you are full-time remote. And they won't, eventually.

Annnnnnyways the leaders at top companies, included Zoom, seem to disagree. I guess you are smarter than them. :)

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