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For junior engineers it's really easy to fall into the trap of trying to solve everything themselves instead of asking for help when they are remote. I say this

For junior engineers it's really easy to fall into the trap of trying to solve everything themselves instead of asking for help when they are remote. I say this as somebody who has spent the last five years working remote team-based gigs.

mcv 4y ago
That trap also exists in the office, though. Even in the office, you need to give juniors active guidance. It's just that the way you give that guidance is different online and in the office.
- zwkrt 4y ago
  The difference is it in the office you can just actively see that somebody is anxious and you can ask them what’s up.
  - mcv 4y ago
    True, but there have been plenty of cases where juniors languishing in an office with little guidance. And remote you can still ask them how they're doing by chat. It's true that the barrier is a bit higher remote, but it's not unsurpassable.
    - fendy3002 4y ago
      In office, there's watercooler chat that can lead to debugging session. In remote there isn't. That being said, with the former culture, it's harder to ask question online and asynchronously, since usually they prefer and wait to have in face session instead.
      - toshaga 4y ago
        The equivalent in remote is a chat/thread turn into a call with a screen share. Managers and seniors encourage juniors to ask questions or just “speak” their minds. There are multiple touchpoints for that to happen, dailies, 1:1’s, spontaneous check-ins b/c people care. In a culture where remote work habits are good, these will be imparted on new-joiners, especially less experienced ones.
- kevinmchugh 4y ago
  It's a lot easier for me to observe a junior struggling, spinning their wheels, and give corrective feedback in the office. I don't know the remote equivalent of glancing at their screen and body language while I get up for a bathroom break.
  - mcv 4y ago
    Listen to what they say during the daily team meeting, and occasionally ask by chat how they're doing. It's true that it has to be a bit more explicit, and it may be a bit slower, but it's far from impossible.
    - Consultant32452 4y ago
      It's really this simple. Junior employees need to be more actively managed than senior employees. They literally do not know what they're doing, that's what makes them junior. Remote or local, they need more oversight to help them learn and become productive.
      - kevinmchugh 4y ago
        Can you give me advice on how to provide oversight in a way that's not demoralizing, infuriating, patronizing? I found working with juniors _fun_ and rewarding in person. Remote i have hated it and don't think I've been good at it
        Consultant32452 4y ago
        One thing that has worked for me in the past is to do some regularly scheduled pair programming. When I'm driving I narrate my thought process and encourage questions. They get to see things and when I make a little typo and they can catch it, not only does it save me a few seconds but it makes them feel GREAT that they helped the senior dev. Making this highly interactive and the senior driving FIRST makes it still "fun" when the junior is in the driver's seat. One of the biggest skills you're helping a junior to learn is how to break apart a big task into small, workable components. Maybe they are assigned a user story, but that user story is going to need multiple functions written, or something like that. So you might start with pseudo-coding or creating the interfaces together, talk high level about how a particular method should work, and then let them do that part by themself. "Let me know if you get stuck or done with that and then let's do a little informal code review." Beyond that it's the normal management stuff of compliment sandwich on negative feedback, etc. The normal things you do to build and maintain rapport with coworkers.
selfhoster11 4y ago
Not just junior engineers, unfortunately
simias 4y ago
Yeah that makes sense to me too, you also tend to be a lot more insecure and want to prove yourself when you're a junior, so you may be a lot more self-conscious asking for help thinking that it may be perceived as incompetence. I've definitely experienced that when I started working. Being remote probably means that it's even harder to push through this insecurity and it could also mean that others may not see that you're struggling and come help help you spontaneously. That being said I think it can probably be improved while still remaining WFH, for instance by more actively chaperoning newbies.
Saint_Genet 4y ago
One problem with being a new employee, junior or not, is that it's hard to know who to ask or has worked on something similar before when you don't really even know your coworkers. The thing I miss most when WFH is overhearing relevant information. Teams dailies do not really solve that problem.
_fat_santa 4y ago
One thing I started as a team lead is telling all my Jr and Mid level engineers to reach out to me for help if they need it, and that I would always be happy to get on a call with them. I had a pretty small team so this was easily manageable. At first I wouldn't get any folks reaching out for help, but eventually they all got comfortable with calling/messaging me if they had an issue. I think a bit part of this is how you see yourself on the team. I gave myself the personal title: "Specialist and Support Person". On any given day I really only have two tasks: * Work on "specialist" stuff within the app, stuff that is way over the heads of any of the Jr's or Mid level devs. * Provide Support on everything else. Since my engineers are the ones pumping out most of the code, the biggest part is making sure they are supported in every way imaginable. There are other responsibilities obviously, but within the context of "day to day" on the team, I found aligning myself with those responsibilities really helped my team.
itsmemattchung 4y ago
> For junior engineers it's really easy to fall into the trap of trying to solve everything themselves instead of asking for help when they are remote Senior folks do this. All the time. Despite having 10+ years of experience and leading engineers at AWS, my default is to "spin my wheels". Now that I understand myself a little better, anytime I find myself laser focused on a problem, but making 0% progress, then I either: 1) distance myself from the problem or 2) ask for help 3) both Junior or not. Asking for help can be difficult
closeparen 4y ago
I think successful remote work has to take the position that asking for help 1:1 is bad, actually. * If you go through the process of figuring it out, you gain a durable understanding of the subject matter which you can use to solve other problems. * If either you (after your investigation) or the subject matter expert (on request) produces documentation of the subject, other people in the future can use this artifact to unblock themselves. * If you ask in a public Slack channel, at least those who are channel-surfing or searching during the retention period might see it and learn something. Getting an answer 1:1 is empty calories. It gives quick satisfaction in the moment, but only leads to more and more communication down the line. Communication kills productivity.
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  > position that asking for help 1:1 is bad, actually. Which is fine for some things. But also really really bad for virtually everything else. It's exceedingly hostile, especially for places where there is no written documentation, and lots of old timers who have tribal knowledge and are "far too productive" to answer messages.
- ketzo 4y ago
  But there's gotta be a balance. It's totally conceivable for a new/junior employee to spend hours or days solving a problem that's already been solved in your codebase, and someone with experience could fix the issue in literally 5 minutes or less. Yes, it's good to learn things on your own. But especially in a small environment, sometimes you gotta move faster than that. Sometimes getting an answer 1:1 is "empty calories", and you're not learning how to solve the problem. But that might be because the problem doesn't need to be solved, and you were wasting hours or days trying to solve it.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  People can't go into the process of figuring it out if they have no direction of what to figure out, what they are expected to accomplish, where the documentation is, how it's organized, who are they expected to report to, and a lot of other things. Juniors aren't born knowing any of those things.
- 4y ago
curiousgal 4y ago
Common advise is to ask for help but like how? Everyone is busy around me!

mcv 4y ago

That trap also exists in the office, though. Even in the office, you need to give juniors active guidance. It's just that the way you give that guidance is different online and in the office.

zwkrt 4y ago
The difference is it in the office you can just actively see that somebody is anxious and you can ask them what’s up.
- mcv 4y ago
  True, but there have been plenty of cases where juniors languishing in an office with little guidance. And remote you can still ask them how they're doing by chat. It's true that the barrier is a bit higher remote, but it's not unsurpassable.
  - fendy3002 4y ago
    In office, there's watercooler chat that can lead to debugging session. In remote there isn't. That being said, with the former culture, it's harder to ask question online and asynchronously, since usually they prefer and wait to have in face session instead.
    - toshaga 4y ago
      The equivalent in remote is a chat/thread turn into a call with a screen share. Managers and seniors encourage juniors to ask questions or just “speak” their minds. There are multiple touchpoints for that to happen, dailies, 1:1’s, spontaneous check-ins b/c people care. In a culture where remote work habits are good, these will be imparted on new-joiners, especially less experienced ones.
kevinmchugh 4y ago
It's a lot easier for me to observe a junior struggling, spinning their wheels, and give corrective feedback in the office. I don't know the remote equivalent of glancing at their screen and body language while I get up for a bathroom break.
- mcv 4y ago
  Listen to what they say during the daily team meeting, and occasionally ask by chat how they're doing. It's true that it has to be a bit more explicit, and it may be a bit slower, but it's far from impossible.
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    It's really this simple. Junior employees need to be more actively managed than senior employees. They literally do not know what they're doing, that's what makes them junior. Remote or local, they need more oversight to help them learn and become productive.
    - kevinmchugh 4y ago
      Can you give me advice on how to provide oversight in a way that's not demoralizing, infuriating, patronizing? I found working with juniors _fun_ and rewarding in person. Remote i have hated it and don't think I've been good at it
      - Consultant32452 4y ago
        One thing that has worked for me in the past is to do some regularly scheduled pair programming. When I'm driving I narrate my thought process and encourage questions. They get to see things and when I make a little typo and they can catch it, not only does it save me a few seconds but it makes them feel GREAT that they helped the senior dev. Making this highly interactive and the senior driving FIRST makes it still "fun" when the junior is in the driver's seat. One of the biggest skills you're helping a junior to learn is how to break apart a big task into small, workable components. Maybe they are assigned a user story, but that user story is going to need multiple functions written, or something like that. So you might start with pseudo-coding or creating the interfaces together, talk high level about how a particular method should work, and then let them do that part by themself. "Let me know if you get stuck or done with that and then let's do a little informal code review." Beyond that it's the normal management stuff of compliment sandwich on negative feedback, etc. The normal things you do to build and maintain rapport with coworkers.

selfhoster11 4y ago

Not just junior engineers, unfortunately

simias 4y ago

Yeah that makes sense to me too, you also tend to be a lot more insecure and want to prove yourself when you're a junior, so you may be a lot more self-conscious asking for help thinking that it may be perceived as incompetence. I've definitely experienced that when I started working. Being remote probably means that it's even harder to push through this insecurity and it could also mean that others may not see that you're struggling and come help help you spontaneously. That being said I think it can probably be improved while still remaining WFH, for instance by more actively chaperoning newbies.

Saint_Genet 4y ago

One problem with being a new employee, junior or not, is that it's hard to know who to ask or has worked on something similar before when you don't really even know your coworkers. The thing I miss most when WFH is overhearing relevant information. Teams dailies do not really solve that problem.

_fat_santa 4y ago

One thing I started as a team lead is telling all my Jr and Mid level engineers to reach out to me for help if they need it, and that I would always be happy to get on a call with them. I had a pretty small team so this was easily manageable. At first I wouldn't get any folks reaching out for help, but eventually they all got comfortable with calling/messaging me if they had an issue. I think a bit part of this is how you see yourself on the team. I gave myself the personal title: "Specialist and Support Person". On any given day I really only have two tasks: * Work on "specialist" stuff within the app, stuff that is way over the heads of any of the Jr's or Mid level devs. * Provide Support on everything else. Since my engineers are the ones pumping out most of the code, the biggest part is making sure they are supported in every way imaginable. There are other responsibilities obviously, but within the context of "day to day" on the team, I found aligning myself with those responsibilities really helped my team.

itsmemattchung 4y ago

> For junior engineers it's really easy to fall into the trap of trying to solve everything themselves instead of asking for help when they are remote Senior folks do this. All the time. Despite having 10+ years of experience and leading engineers at AWS, my default is to "spin my wheels". Now that I understand myself a little better, anytime I find myself laser focused on a problem, but making 0% progress, then I either: 1) distance myself from the problem or 2) ask for help 3) both Junior or not. Asking for help can be difficult

closeparen 4y ago

I think successful remote work has to take the position that asking for help 1:1 is bad, actually. * If you go through the process of figuring it out, you gain a durable understanding of the subject matter which you can use to solve other problems. * If either you (after your investigation) or the subject matter expert (on request) produces documentation of the subject, other people in the future can use this artifact to unblock themselves. * If you ask in a public Slack channel, at least those who are channel-surfing or searching during the retention period might see it and learn something. Getting an answer 1:1 is empty calories. It gives quick satisfaction in the moment, but only leads to more and more communication down the line. Communication kills productivity.

KaiserPro 4y ago
> position that asking for help 1:1 is bad, actually. Which is fine for some things. But also really really bad for virtually everything else. It's exceedingly hostile, especially for places where there is no written documentation, and lots of old timers who have tribal knowledge and are "far too productive" to answer messages.
ketzo 4y ago
But there's gotta be a balance. It's totally conceivable for a new/junior employee to spend hours or days solving a problem that's already been solved in your codebase, and someone with experience could fix the issue in literally 5 minutes or less. Yes, it's good to learn things on your own. But especially in a small environment, sometimes you gotta move faster than that. Sometimes getting an answer 1:1 is "empty calories", and you're not learning how to solve the problem. But that might be because the problem doesn't need to be solved, and you were wasting hours or days trying to solve it.
marcosdumay 4y ago
People can't go into the process of figuring it out if they have no direction of what to figure out, what they are expected to accomplish, where the documentation is, how it's organized, who are they expected to report to, and a lot of other things. Juniors aren't born knowing any of those things.
4y ago

curiousgal 4y ago

Common advise is to ask for help but like how? Everyone is busy around me!