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I dispute this repeated claim that entry level workers struggle with WFH. They enjoy all of the same benefits everyone else does: increased ability to focus, mo

I dispute this repeated claim that entry level workers struggle with WFH. They enjoy all of the same benefits everyone else does: increased ability to focus, more freedom of work style and schedule, freedom to live where they want… Mentoring someone remotely is no harder than doing it in person. With WFH entry level people everywhere can gain access to the industry. No longer do they need to move or already live in SF, NY…

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
I dunno man, having onboarded people remotely (for many years now, due to distributed working) it's much, much harder for a lot of people. The big problem is that there's a bar to meet for Zoom which is higher than that to ask a question in the office. Rightly or wrongly, lots of people feel this way, and I ended up having to over-schedule meetings to make sure people got support. Additionally, junior people are much, much less likely to have the space to make WFH effective, so they do benefit from having an office. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of WFH, but I'm pretty sceptical of it working for junior people as well as it does for senior. And even then, that difference will cause a bunch of problems.
- luffapi 5y ago
  I’ve also on boarded many people remote and in person. When you work for a fully remote company, on boarding is not difficult. Speaking up on Zoom may have a higher barrier to entry than in an in person meeting (maybe) but asking questions on Slack is much lower. The great thing about remote first, is that a lot of communication is written and can be referenced in the future, which is a great boon to juniors.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    > When you work for a fully remote company, on boarding is not difficult. This is probably the key, to be honest. The companies where I've done this were not fully remote. I agree with you that conditional on being selected for a fully-remote company, this is fine. My understanding is that these companies tend not to hire as many juniors though, am I incorrect?
    - luffapi 5y ago
      > My understanding is that these companies tend not to hire as many juniors though, am I incorrect? Speaking for myself, I’ve always hired a good mix of jr/sr people. I do always look for devs that have the proven ability to ship (so jr devs with a GitHub project for instance).
- theoblank 5y ago
  I agree with this general sentiment. Many people have an idealized vision of WFH and aren't paying attention to the challenges. Another factor I haven't seen much discussion of is people with vs without children. WFH with children presents a whole new slew of challenges.
  - chokma 5y ago
    A former colleague of mine has three children and no spare office room in his house, so his work-from-home met with school-from-home. He thought about buying a trailer like those used on construction sites, but those are also not prime office-material. I guess once the children are at school again, he will be happier.
- dkarl 5y ago
  Some people claim they solve this by creating a day-long team meeting and having everybody sit in it with their microphones off and cameras off if they want, creating a kind of oral Slack for quick questions and conversations. Personally, I couldn't stand that. My team tried it for one day, and it was so unpopular, it was never mentioned again. I could only do it if I had a private home office that I never used for anything but my job. WFH has to enable boundaries between work life and home life without creating boundaries between coworkers, and that hasn't been solved yet.
delecti 5y ago
I think it's two different things though. Widespread WFH helps people get those entry-level jobs, but make it harder to become proficient once they do. An entry-level worker often won't know which things they should try to work through, and which things they should get help for to get unblocked.
- luffapi 5y ago
  This is the same for in-person work. Whether you’re face to face or remote, you still need to practice good management. I find it’s much easier to scale as a remote manager as the team’s focus is much more work oriented and much less focused on office drama that requires management participation or intervention. Even something like catching up with everyone after a weekend is much more taxing IRL from a management perspective.
  - delecti 5y ago
    As a senior engineer, I've lost a big signal when one of the more junior engineers on my team needs help: being able to see frustrated faces by just looking around. It's much easier to check in and make sure nobody's blocked for too long when we're in the same place. It's resulting in less disruptions for me, but if the cost is the junior devs staying blocked longer, that may not be a net positive.
jawns 5y ago
> They enjoy all of the same benefits everyone else does: increased ability to focus, more freedom of work style and schedule, freedom to live where they want… I think some of the inequality comes not from the demands of the job itself but from where people are in life. I've been working remotely for 10 years, so I bought my house because it had a home office. My WFH setup is very comfortable, and it works well for my family. But early in my career, I was renting a cheap apartment with multiple roommates, and it was not as ideal for remote work. And I likely would have missed out on networking opportunities and just general friendships versus someone doing the same role in-office. Those aren't as important to me at this stage of my career, but they were very important back then.
dkarl 5y ago
I'm noticing a bigger spread in the success of onboarding new people. The success cases aren't getting any better, but there are a lot more neglected people and more "failures to launch." It's normal for a senior person to need to show some initiative in getting the lay of the land and establishing themselves in the company, but I'm also seeing more junior people being unintentionally left to do the same, and few of them can handle it. What's sad is that since expectations are lower for junior people, and since the industry has embraced the idea that virtually all traditional management responsibilities in software engineering should be left for engineers to figure out themselves, new employees can hang around for months without anyone caring that nobody has put any effort into making them productive, which stunts their growth and desensitizes them to being helpless and useless. Eventually effective onboarding for fully remote employees will become the norm, but meanwhile, a lot of people are falling through the cracks.
dfxm12 5y ago
This is just one data point, but the new college grad we brought in has really hit the ground running. He is not struggling with working from home at all & I'm not having any problems mentoring him.
ladyattis 5y ago
I think for some trying to explain how to get setup for the VPN remotely is a nightmare. Why I mention this? Because I've had this exact problem a couple months back. Basically, I wasn't able to access a SQL server on the business' internal network until me and IT had the realization that my IP address at home was conflicting with theirs. So I had to manually update my router settings and all the affected devices (laptop included) to use a different subnet. So it's little things like this that will plague any on-boarding WFH worker among others.
- coredog64 5y ago
  Outlook stopped working on my corporate laptop, seemingly at random. My choices were to use the web app or to schedule (at least a week out) an in-person appointment, drive into the office only for this, and have someone look at my laptop. I'm at least in the same city: It would be a severe PITA if I had to FedEx my laptop back to the depot.
jameshart 5y ago
I do feel like college hires going into remote gigs right now are missing out on an important ritual - the rite of passage of walking into that big office building - a place full of people who are united in a common purpose and whose ranks you've been trusted to join. That sense of 'I'm a professional now, like these people'. It must be hard to have an idea of the scale of the enterprise you're engaged in when you never see more than five or six faces on a Zoom call at a time. But there's nothing natural or ancient about going in to the office as a rite of passage - it's not necessary. It's just something this generation won't get to have, just like my generation didn't have to go through the ritual of getting our first proper business suit, and how direct deposit has taken away the moment of being physically handed a paycheck. But they'll have their own things, I'm sure. Maybe the defining moment will be when that Fedex driver arrives and you sign for your first work laptop? Maybe logging onto the corporate slack and seeing all the channels for the first time imparts some sense of shared purpose? And maybe that means you also don't get artificially seduced by the trappings of the environment. Because the work is done in a serious building with serious glass conference rooms and serious desks, we learn to take the business seriously - maybe more seriously than it deserves. And maybe people who work in offices typing on computers every day do think a bit too much of themselves, because after all they work in an important building full of important people. Perhaps it's a good thing to miss out on that ego-stroking. Harder to take yourself too seriously when you're working on an Ikea desk at the foot of your bed surrounded by your own dirty laundry.
thomascgalvin 5y ago
We've hired a couple of entry-level developers during COVID, and they've thrived in a remote work environment. The big reason for this, I think, is that the whole team is remote. Since everyone communicated via zoom, and everything is coordinated online, they can slip into the team seamlessly. I think the upcoming blended teams are going to make this more difficult. My org, like most, is pushing for two days in the office, three days remote, but a few of our hired are geographically distant, so they will always be remote. I'm worried that they're going to start to feel isolated from the team.
brundolf 5y ago
As someone who started a job remotely during the pandemic (and I'm not even entry-level), I can unequivocally disagree. It's much harder to get your technical bearings, not to mention your social bearings, over Slack and Zoom.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago

I dunno man, having onboarded people remotely (for many years now, due to distributed working) it's much, much harder for a lot of people. The big problem is that there's a bar to meet for Zoom which is higher than that to ask a question in the office. Rightly or wrongly, lots of people feel this way, and I ended up having to over-schedule meetings to make sure people got support. Additionally, junior people are much, much less likely to have the space to make WFH effective, so they do benefit from having an office. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of WFH, but I'm pretty sceptical of it working for junior people as well as it does for senior. And even then, that difference will cause a bunch of problems.

luffapi 5y ago
I’ve also on boarded many people remote and in person. When you work for a fully remote company, on boarding is not difficult. Speaking up on Zoom may have a higher barrier to entry than in an in person meeting (maybe) but asking questions on Slack is much lower. The great thing about remote first, is that a lot of communication is written and can be referenced in the future, which is a great boon to juniors.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  > When you work for a fully remote company, on boarding is not difficult. This is probably the key, to be honest. The companies where I've done this were not fully remote. I agree with you that conditional on being selected for a fully-remote company, this is fine. My understanding is that these companies tend not to hire as many juniors though, am I incorrect?
  - luffapi 5y ago
    > My understanding is that these companies tend not to hire as many juniors though, am I incorrect? Speaking for myself, I’ve always hired a good mix of jr/sr people. I do always look for devs that have the proven ability to ship (so jr devs with a GitHub project for instance).
theoblank 5y ago
I agree with this general sentiment. Many people have an idealized vision of WFH and aren't paying attention to the challenges. Another factor I haven't seen much discussion of is people with vs without children. WFH with children presents a whole new slew of challenges.
- chokma 5y ago
  A former colleague of mine has three children and no spare office room in his house, so his work-from-home met with school-from-home. He thought about buying a trailer like those used on construction sites, but those are also not prime office-material. I guess once the children are at school again, he will be happier.
dkarl 5y ago
Some people claim they solve this by creating a day-long team meeting and having everybody sit in it with their microphones off and cameras off if they want, creating a kind of oral Slack for quick questions and conversations. Personally, I couldn't stand that. My team tried it for one day, and it was so unpopular, it was never mentioned again. I could only do it if I had a private home office that I never used for anything but my job. WFH has to enable boundaries between work life and home life without creating boundaries between coworkers, and that hasn't been solved yet.

delecti 5y ago

I think it's two different things though. Widespread WFH helps people get those entry-level jobs, but make it harder to become proficient once they do. An entry-level worker often won't know which things they should try to work through, and which things they should get help for to get unblocked.

luffapi 5y ago
This is the same for in-person work. Whether you’re face to face or remote, you still need to practice good management. I find it’s much easier to scale as a remote manager as the team’s focus is much more work oriented and much less focused on office drama that requires management participation or intervention. Even something like catching up with everyone after a weekend is much more taxing IRL from a management perspective.
- delecti 5y ago
  As a senior engineer, I've lost a big signal when one of the more junior engineers on my team needs help: being able to see frustrated faces by just looking around. It's much easier to check in and make sure nobody's blocked for too long when we're in the same place. It's resulting in less disruptions for me, but if the cost is the junior devs staying blocked longer, that may not be a net positive.

jawns 5y ago

> They enjoy all of the same benefits everyone else does: increased ability to focus, more freedom of work style and schedule, freedom to live where they want… I think some of the inequality comes not from the demands of the job itself but from where people are in life. I've been working remotely for 10 years, so I bought my house because it had a home office. My WFH setup is very comfortable, and it works well for my family. But early in my career, I was renting a cheap apartment with multiple roommates, and it was not as ideal for remote work. And I likely would have missed out on networking opportunities and just general friendships versus someone doing the same role in-office. Those aren't as important to me at this stage of my career, but they were very important back then.

dkarl 5y ago

I'm noticing a bigger spread in the success of onboarding new people. The success cases aren't getting any better, but there are a lot more neglected people and more "failures to launch." It's normal for a senior person to need to show some initiative in getting the lay of the land and establishing themselves in the company, but I'm also seeing more junior people being unintentionally left to do the same, and few of them can handle it. What's sad is that since expectations are lower for junior people, and since the industry has embraced the idea that virtually all traditional management responsibilities in software engineering should be left for engineers to figure out themselves, new employees can hang around for months without anyone caring that nobody has put any effort into making them productive, which stunts their growth and desensitizes them to being helpless and useless. Eventually effective onboarding for fully remote employees will become the norm, but meanwhile, a lot of people are falling through the cracks.

dfxm12 5y ago

This is just one data point, but the new college grad we brought in has really hit the ground running. He is not struggling with working from home at all & I'm not having any problems mentoring him.

ladyattis 5y ago

I think for some trying to explain how to get setup for the VPN remotely is a nightmare. Why I mention this? Because I've had this exact problem a couple months back. Basically, I wasn't able to access a SQL server on the business' internal network until me and IT had the realization that my IP address at home was conflicting with theirs. So I had to manually update my router settings and all the affected devices (laptop included) to use a different subnet. So it's little things like this that will plague any on-boarding WFH worker among others.

coredog64 5y ago
Outlook stopped working on my corporate laptop, seemingly at random. My choices were to use the web app or to schedule (at least a week out) an in-person appointment, drive into the office only for this, and have someone look at my laptop. I'm at least in the same city: It would be a severe PITA if I had to FedEx my laptop back to the depot.

jameshart 5y ago

I do feel like college hires going into remote gigs right now are missing out on an important ritual - the rite of passage of walking into that big office building - a place full of people who are united in a common purpose and whose ranks you've been trusted to join. That sense of 'I'm a professional now, like these people'. It must be hard to have an idea of the scale of the enterprise you're engaged in when you never see more than five or six faces on a Zoom call at a time. But there's nothing natural or ancient about going in to the office as a rite of passage - it's not necessary. It's just something this generation won't get to have, just like my generation didn't have to go through the ritual of getting our first proper business suit, and how direct deposit has taken away the moment of being physically handed a paycheck. But they'll have their own things, I'm sure. Maybe the defining moment will be when that Fedex driver arrives and you sign for your first work laptop? Maybe logging onto the corporate slack and seeing all the channels for the first time imparts some sense of shared purpose? And maybe that means you also don't get artificially seduced by the trappings of the environment. Because the work is done in a serious building with serious glass conference rooms and serious desks, we learn to take the business seriously - maybe more seriously than it deserves. And maybe people who work in offices typing on computers every day do think a bit too much of themselves, because after all they work in an important building full of important people. Perhaps it's a good thing to miss out on that ego-stroking. Harder to take yourself too seriously when you're working on an Ikea desk at the foot of your bed surrounded by your own dirty laundry.

thomascgalvin 5y ago

We've hired a couple of entry-level developers during COVID, and they've thrived in a remote work environment. The big reason for this, I think, is that the whole team is remote. Since everyone communicated via zoom, and everything is coordinated online, they can slip into the team seamlessly. I think the upcoming blended teams are going to make this more difficult. My org, like most, is pushing for two days in the office, three days remote, but a few of our hired are geographically distant, so they will always be remote. I'm worried that they're going to start to feel isolated from the team.

brundolf 5y ago

As someone who started a job remotely during the pandemic (and I'm not even entry-level), I can unequivocally disagree. It's much harder to get your technical bearings, not to mention your social bearings, over Slack and Zoom.