Along with trends like having line managers be in charge of 20+ direct reports, it leaves people scratching their heads.
But still there are people who preach RTO as if all the desks are just waiting there. I think all the benefits of remote work are just taken for granted now and people just see downsides.
Generally I'd get all my deliverables done by the time that anyone else showed up, so after standup I'd just circulate and see what everyone was working on, and if I saw someone who was frustrated, I'd see if they wanted help. This let me help train and teach the kids, which I really enjoyed.
That's the one reason I don't like fully remote/zoom jobs. I really enjoy the interaction and the ability to teach.
the real glory days were the 70's when we all had to share a single multitasked computer, and the terminals (not enough for everybody) were all connected by wires and formed a sort of hive around the mini in a room called "the bullpen". Senior, junior, multiple unrelated projects sitting shoulder to shoulder, the shared tips and techniques, the humor, man it was so much fun. The day my coworker learned to play Ride of the Valkyries on the VT-100 keyboard due to a bug in the autorepeat function... music! the shared computer disk could not have held a single mp3 had mp3's even been invented yet
(buy a VAX, get a library. oh, and a computer too.)
the 6 months after the first screen editor was installed was constant questions and answers bouncing across the room on how to do things.
A picture prevents you from copying, but often that's not as important. One can use judgment to determine whether a picture or text can be better.
Receiving such messages can sometimes mean I need to transcribe a bit of what I'm seeing, but the added clarity to what they're trying to communicate can be worth it. I welcome it.
I tend to get things like 1/3 of a terminal window missing all of the context. No commands and only half of the error.
Ever receive a photo (not a screenshot) of a spreadsheet when they expect you to do something with the content? I have.
Another personal favourite is a browser window cropped so tight I can't tell where they are. No address bar, page header removed, sidebar missing, etc.
Send text as text! One of these times I am going to print the photo, annotate it, and fax it back. Or maybe I need better coworkers.
there’s the whiteboard element but i’ve gotten pretty good at exalidraw and zoom annotating
add in the remote makes it kinda easy to not be distracting in meetings so i can easily DM them context on the side to get them ramped up easier
In my experience the biggest factor in teams usually came down to the middle management layer. If their "style" was "watch over your shoulder, butts in seats" type of micromanagement then juniors didn't tend to progress unless they were self motivated to seek it out.
With AI coding agents, I finally feel like I can tap the shoulder of a pro for help.
It’s not the absolute expert, and I know it’ll make mistakes. But much more knowledgeable than me at certain technologies and techniques.
The "seniors" tend to be glorified salespeople whose job is to put together presentations and reassure clients that everything's going well, while the one or more interns/recent grads do all the technical work. Some projects there'd be one junior literally writing every line of code while the seniors spent their entire time in meeting rooms talking about god knows what.
Dressing smart, talking smoothly, and being older looking (to imply experience to clients) are the attributes that get you a senior role.
The companies would staff projects with a mix of seniors and juniors. Seniors to get started fast, in the right direction, and actually guarantee the delivery; juniors to keep the costs lower and to have a pipeline of new people. Hands-on from day 1, sitting with seniors in a project with clear timelines and deliverables, with projects and technologies changing regularly, tended to level up the newcomers fast.
This was in small to midsize (50-500) consulting companies where the projects did not come via CEOs being buddies with others.
And didn't know development at a high level; no one to guide, so I self-learned and acquired some bad habits that I'm now breaking, and didn't learn some necessary techniques that I'm now learning.
Anyone else open to mentoring feel free to chime in, the more the better - mentoring is highly individualized.
That's the bit I really notice I am missing out on when I work at home.
then we got acquired by a much larger onsite-first company, and their slack is dead. nobody posts anything unless they absolutely have to (i.e. "the men's toilet on the 3rd floor is overflowing" at least twice a week, or that some printer needs paper or toner). there aren't slack bots because nobody checks slack. everything else happens in person, in a servicenow ticket, or at most via email
their IT team has no idea how to support how we used slack before. in one case they told us to stop posting in a channel used by other parts of the company because we were generating too much disruptive activity. I can see the team cultures around it eroding week over week, but we're not in any office, so there aren't any in-person behaviors replacing it. we're all simply becoming increasingly isolated, losing track of each other both as people and in the work we're doing, and becoming unhappier and less effective
this shit isn't hard, but it requires effort and people who see the benefit of it. there's a perception that people with remote work skills can just roll up into an office and be as effective without changing any fundamental aspects of how they work, and vice versa, and it's all bullshit
It was a bit of drama and the person ended up leaving because they wanted others to adapt to them. I think they ended up in a remote-only company in the end. Very talented developer.
Similarly, being available to stakeholders and colleagues from other teams come to me at any time and get a quick answer was something that ended up being amazing for my career, got me a few lifelong friends and even a cat.
Pair Programming in person - one computer & one person looking over another's shoulder usually.
Pair Programming remotely - two computers & you can easily swap control of either's device or change who's sharing their screen.
The only thing working in an office wins on imo is building very close relationships with co-workers. I think physical presence is a human thing that cannot be beat. You can still build great relationships remotely but they're not the same. From the point of view of a company, remote relationships might be good enough or even better as they can prevent people becoming "to close" and ending up on the news at a concert together.
We did indeed notice it took very long to get them up to speed.
They didn't really get going until the lockdowns were fully lifted and people returned to office.
Hard to tell what would have happened without the two+ years of Covid restrictions, but with a sample size of two I feel like it wasn't a fluke.
I started in a whole new team (as a senior) remotely during Covid which also contained juniors. They did incredibly well and were able to reach anyone remotely with no issue.
What might have been different is that the entire team was new and we knew we had to focus on our communication online and think about effective ways to do so. Which also benefited the juniors in the team. Many teams and companies never really gave it that much thought to begin with and I still see teams struggling to work remote at times. But, after giving them some pointers they often manage to do a whole lot better.
Some basic things out the top of my head that have benefited teams and juniors specifically:
- Have a "working together" channel where people can start meetings and where anyone can join if they feel like it. It often ends up being used by people who either like working together or those who can use some overall input on what they are working on. - Have social online moments as well. One team had a 15 minutes social block in front of standup's an other team had just a weekly social call. - Actively check in on other team members. Which feels silly to say, but the amount of times where I have seen teams only communicate during standup is also silly. Specifically juniors. If they are given a task after a little while check in with them how it is going and ask if they want to share their process. Basically how you probably in the office would walk past and also have a little conversation with them. - Take time for questions from juniors and make it clear you will do so. Whenever you are in the office and they approach you for help it means you also often serve them on the spot. Yet online I have seen juniors being ghosted for a variety of reasons. At the very least make sure to respond to juniors with a "give me 5 minutes and I'll give you a call".
To be clear, I personally like working hybrid and I do think there are benefits to coming to office at least for one day per week (assuming it is coordinated and not a ghost town). But my main point is that juniors struggling due to remote work is often more a symptom of the company not really having a good training and coaching process/culture in place more than anything else. Which I am not blaming on individual teams either. Training people is hard, people get bachelors degrees in education and then spend a lifetime getting better at educating. It's up to companies to educate their teams in this as well, offer the resources and have people on staff who solely focus on junior training.
I just replied further down ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48353154 ) about this. You are entirely right, but it is also something that can largely be mitigated if companies and teams are self aware enough. I am not going to rewrite that entire comment but in addition to what I wrote there any self respecting company over a certain size should still have a junior training process in place that spans at least a year possibly two. Letting individual teams or even individuals figure out how to handle juniors always would give you wildly different results, but being in the office this was often hidden because some juniors would organically find other people for support. If you are not physically in the office you need to make sure they have other check-in moments with each other. Allow for moments where they can meet people outside their teams (knowledge presentations, workshops, etc).
I still think working hybrid (but one day per week imho is often enough) is the sweet spot for many reasons. But overall I mostly think that the FT (as often) is making excuse for things that boil down to "no, the main reason is actually corporate cost savings and refusal to invest in core processes".
$DAYJOB might as well be fully-remote since the team is heavily distributed and it's the same problem.
I think it's a problem for all workers, not just juniors. Maybe 1 person in the org sees the whole elephant. Way too many "organizational branch mispredictions" from incomplete mental models colliding.
However, I disagree with this part:
> Given who the power lies with in our society, I think we all know which one will win out in the long run.
In a capitalist system, there is always push and pull between employer and employee. Look how desperate tech hiring was during the COVID-19 crisis. It was insane. You had silly stories on HN of people working two jobs at once. Next, the economy slowed and layoffs came. The script flipped. Once the economy is strong again, employers will be more flexible on accepting remote work. For many industries that employ technologists, part-time work-from-home is now a permanent reality. If you not a "gold standard" company, you need to find non-economic advantages when hiring. One of those is part-time work-from-home.I'm a woman. I also have MS. A lot of people with MS, myself included, experience something called the 'MS Hug', which is spasticity, pain, and tenderness in your ribcage muscles.
Wearing a bra for 9 hours a day ensures that I'm in a shit ton of pain. A full time RTO job would mean being in pain constantly so that other people aren't offended by my body. Right now I'm hybrid with one day a week in and I just load up on painkillers and muscle relaxers for that day, but even then I can only do so much because you can't just down 8mg of tizanidine and then drive home.
You wouldn't know any of this by looking at me.
I know a lot of people with disabilities that can work if we're WFH, but the requirements of full RTO would push us out of the workplace. I can do 1-2 days, but more than that would end up being very difficult. I can borrow energy/slam caffeine/take an extra Adderall on office days and then just recover the next day or go to bed as soon as I get home, but doing that 5 days a week isn't going to work.
I understand where the RTO advocates are coming from. I do find those 3/4 days a month in the office to be helpful for context building, and there are a lot of jobs that do benefit from that in person collaboration.
My job is primarily supporting people across several countries with a side of system maintenance. There's not really any point to me being in the office more than I am. In fact, being able to work effectively remotely is a key skill for doing this job.
On the dress code, for me personally, unless I'm at home in commando sweatpants and a sweatshirt, there is always a low grade cognitive tax of me being uncomfortable in the garb that society deems acceptable to wear in an office. And I'm one of the lucky ones, I can wear khakis and a polo. My heart goes out to those poor Wall Street guys who are stuck in suits all day.
Of course other persons have other needs though
That's just to say its not always more effective