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Comment by gbuk2013 | Hacker News Reader

gbuk2013

I’m a lead consultant on a gig where the CTO outright told us that he’s not really interested in growing their (frankly, under qualified) engineers, just wants them to get on with the job - it’s very short-sighted and sad.

That said, in my previous job in a startup we hired very junior engineers and gave them plenty of opportunity and support for growth and several people did stunningly well. Pity the company didn’t do very well (IMHO due to focusing more or this sort of thing rather than making money).

The truth is bound to be somewhere in the middle.

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>That said, in my previous job in a startup we hired very junior engineers and gave them plenty of opportunity and support for growth and several people did stunningly well. Pity the company didn’t do very well (IMHO due to focusing more or this sort of thing rather than making money).

Mentoring is a key part of technical leadership, way easier to help the talent grow into your requirements (even if they are under-qualified, for now)

I agree but there's also the extra difficulty to do mentoring remotely (we are a remote first company). I *really* like being remote first and provide the choice if you want to work on site or wherever you want. But it does come with some challenges.

This may be a hot take, but I don't think most juniors should be remote. You need some time face to face to understand the processes and you miss lot of passive knowledge when you're not navigating a workplace of people discussing matters.

once you get a few years under the belt, sure. You're probably fine doing everything online. I can't think of many remote only studios hiring juniors anyways.

100% agree and that's exactly what we do. Almost all of our juniors are near the office. Because they need to see what's working at a company means at least once in their life.

There's few exception when we don't have the choice, but really, I cannot imagine myself to be full remote without having seen a company "in the flesh" before.

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