4 ms·

It fails with respect to growing junior team members. It’s impossible for junior team members to observe the day-to-day patterns, habits and general implicit kn

by JackFr 7y ago

It fails with respect to growing junior team members. It’s impossible for junior team members to observe the day-to-day patterns, habits and general implicit knowledge of senior team members that they would pick up (mostly not consciously) in an office simply through observation.

justaj 7y ago
Do you think this might be solved by more screensharing and/or pair programming together with experienced devs?
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  There is so much you learn from others by implicit body language. For example, the junior learns from the senior's "your work today was okay" body language vs "your work today was goo" body language. The senior can't always verbalize these thoughts, because the words often can have outsized and unwanted impact on people that body language does not.
  - otras 7y ago
    > "your work today was goo" body language While this is an unfortunate typo, imagining this body language makes for a great visual.
topkai22 7y ago
Like most things related to remote work, you just have to be more formal in the the approach. Our team has successfully developed several cohorts of college hires remotely. You have to give them consistent (daily, for hours) access to mentoring/senior resources via scheduled time, keep design or other higher level meetings public and make sure the juniors know they are invited to attend, and make clear to the junior devs that they are a priority so they can feel free to ping anyone on the team whenever they need help, plus make clear to the rest of the team that helping the junior devs is a priority. Keeping an eye in the jrs work item completion rate and eliciting if there is a problem when it slows down also helps
- polishdude20 7y ago
  Where do you work and are you hiring?
  - topkai22 7y ago
    Microsoft, in consulting services, yes. https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/microsoft-aspire-experience https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/microsoft-aspir... https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/job/795772/Full-Time-Opportunities-for-Students-or-Recent-Graduates-Technical-Consulting-Client-Success-2021-Start-Dates https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/job/795772/Full... Unfortunately it looks like we are back to requiring college hires to colocate for a year, even if their day to day teams are remote/distribute. Industry hires can live anywhere. Travel can be up to 100% depending on the project (although not right now.) Microsoft is a huge company and not all (or even most) teams are as good at remote work as my team is, but the company as a whole is serious about the inclusive behaviors the underly my teams culture
    - polishdude20 7y ago
      What about jobs for non students who are self taught and working in another industry but have experience with JavaScript?
      - topkai22 7y ago
        There are large number of self taught people in my area of the company (services). Experience in another industry is plus- we are the people who directly help customers build on top of Microsoft’s products. The biggest thing we (my division) look for in industry hires is an ability to interact with customers and master new skills quickly. On the technical angle, we do want to see knowledge beyond just on area of development (full-stack to cloud, o365 integration, sys admin experience, analytics work, etc...). Direct knowledge of the MS stack helps, but we hire plenty of people who know AWS and them teach them Azure (for example). In terms of setting yourself up to get hired, I recommend trying to start a product/business. I’ve done three side companies/projects over the years, all done on nights and weekends, all of which never really did anything. I wasn’t very committed to them, they didn’t take up THAT much time, never really cost money (never had payroll, biggest expenses was a small factory order of light up dog collars at one), and I expected them to fail, but I learned a ton of new stuff to make the MVP and business systems happen.
itronitron 7y ago
>> It’s impossible for junior team members to observe the day-to-day patterns Those day-to-day patterns are changing though. There are many young people working on team projects, pursuing their interests while remotely located and never meeting their collaborators, Discord enables many of these communities so that stands a chance of becoming the new normal.

by JackFr 7y ago

justaj 7y ago

Do you think this might be solved by more screensharing and/or pair programming together with experienced devs?

abdullahkhalids 7y ago
There is so much you learn from others by implicit body language. For example, the junior learns from the senior's "your work today was okay" body language vs "your work today was goo" body language. The senior can't always verbalize these thoughts, because the words often can have outsized and unwanted impact on people that body language does not.
- otras 7y ago
  > "your work today was goo" body language While this is an unfortunate typo, imagining this body language makes for a great visual.

topkai22 7y ago

Like most things related to remote work, you just have to be more formal in the the approach. Our team has successfully developed several cohorts of college hires remotely. You have to give them consistent (daily, for hours) access to mentoring/senior resources via scheduled time, keep design or other higher level meetings public and make sure the juniors know they are invited to attend, and make clear to the junior devs that they are a priority so they can feel free to ping anyone on the team whenever they need help, plus make clear to the rest of the team that helping the junior devs is a priority. Keeping an eye in the jrs work item completion rate and eliciting if there is a problem when it slows down also helps

polishdude20 7y ago
Where do you work and are you hiring?
- topkai22 7y ago
  Microsoft, in consulting services, yes. https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/microsoft-aspire-experience https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/microsoft-aspir... https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/job/795772/Full-Time-Opportunities-for-Students-or-Recent-Graduates-Technical-Consulting-Client-Success-2021-Start-Dates https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/job/795772/Full... Unfortunately it looks like we are back to requiring college hires to colocate for a year, even if their day to day teams are remote/distribute. Industry hires can live anywhere. Travel can be up to 100% depending on the project (although not right now.) Microsoft is a huge company and not all (or even most) teams are as good at remote work as my team is, but the company as a whole is serious about the inclusive behaviors the underly my teams culture
  - polishdude20 7y ago
    What about jobs for non students who are self taught and working in another industry but have experience with JavaScript?
    - topkai22 7y ago
      There are large number of self taught people in my area of the company (services). Experience in another industry is plus- we are the people who directly help customers build on top of Microsoft’s products. The biggest thing we (my division) look for in industry hires is an ability to interact with customers and master new skills quickly. On the technical angle, we do want to see knowledge beyond just on area of development (full-stack to cloud, o365 integration, sys admin experience, analytics work, etc...). Direct knowledge of the MS stack helps, but we hire plenty of people who know AWS and them teach them Azure (for example). In terms of setting yourself up to get hired, I recommend trying to start a product/business. I’ve done three side companies/projects over the years, all done on nights and weekends, all of which never really did anything. I wasn’t very committed to them, they didn’t take up THAT much time, never really cost money (never had payroll, biggest expenses was a small factory order of light up dog collars at one), and I expected them to fail, but I learned a ton of new stuff to make the MVP and business systems happen.

itronitron 7y ago

>> It’s impossible for junior team members to observe the day-to-day patterns Those day-to-day patterns are changing though. There are many young people working on team projects, pursuing their interests while remotely located and never meeting their collaborators, Discord enables many of these communities so that stands a chance of becoming the new normal.