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Question for anyone who's had to onboard/train Jr's in a 100% remote environment, what's worked for you? How do you maximize their chances of success? What are

Question for anyone who's had to onboard/train Jr's in a 100% remote environment, what's worked for you? How do you maximize their chances of success? What are some common pain points? This has been an issue at my org and we're having a hard time improving it.

foobarian 4y ago
When I started, my direct manager took me on a walk. We visited about 20 different desks and had introductions and impromptu chats with various developers and product managers, putting the names to faces and expertises. Not all on the same team either, some were just people he knew well from various projects. This was a huge jumpstart for an introvert like me. In an online-only Slack environment there is the private team channel, and the big scary common channel where you are afraid to ask questions unless you tried to solve the problem by yourself first. Maybe a better online solution would help, a-la some magical VR space that Meta comes up with.
- verve_rat 4y ago
  Or documentation. Just a list of slack channels and what they are used for is a big help. Remote working requires effort too.
Inversechi 4y ago
For me it was a lot of pairing/mobbing on tasks leveraging the tools available. e.g having the driving person sharing their screen and using tools like Jetbrains Code With Me or VSCode LiveShare for the coding aspects. Biggest pain point was the flexibility that was required with lockdowns meant sometimes the senior members were occupied with parenting responsibilities but we tried to ensure that the junior member had someone to pair with most of the time.
_wldu 4y ago
Be clear on what is expected. Have weekly deliverables and weekly team meetings. Don't micromanage them or have them meet each day. Get them off to a good start (give them all the gear and info they need to do the job) and be very explicit in what is expected. Give them a few weeks to get acclimated, then hold them accountable. Whether they are remote or in the office, they can be successful. If they are getting their deliverables in on time and do things the way they are asked to do them (follow these simple rules)... that's all that matters. And when I say follow the rules, I mean that I don't care if they use vim, emacs, nano, Wordpad, Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc. But I do care about how they submit a merge request and whether or not they PGP sign their commits.

foobarian 4y ago

When I started, my direct manager took me on a walk. We visited about 20 different desks and had introductions and impromptu chats with various developers and product managers, putting the names to faces and expertises. Not all on the same team either, some were just people he knew well from various projects. This was a huge jumpstart for an introvert like me. In an online-only Slack environment there is the private team channel, and the big scary common channel where you are afraid to ask questions unless you tried to solve the problem by yourself first. Maybe a better online solution would help, a-la some magical VR space that Meta comes up with.

verve_rat 4y ago
Or documentation. Just a list of slack channels and what they are used for is a big help. Remote working requires effort too.

Inversechi 4y ago

For me it was a lot of pairing/mobbing on tasks leveraging the tools available. e.g having the driving person sharing their screen and using tools like Jetbrains Code With Me or VSCode LiveShare for the coding aspects. Biggest pain point was the flexibility that was required with lockdowns meant sometimes the senior members were occupied with parenting responsibilities but we tried to ensure that the junior member had someone to pair with most of the time.

_wldu 4y ago

Be clear on what is expected. Have weekly deliverables and weekly team meetings. Don't micromanage them or have them meet each day. Get them off to a good start (give them all the gear and info they need to do the job) and be very explicit in what is expected. Give them a few weeks to get acclimated, then hold them accountable. Whether they are remote or in the office, they can be successful. If they are getting their deliverables in on time and do things the way they are asked to do them (follow these simple rules)... that's all that matters. And when I say follow the rules, I mean that I don't care if they use vim, emacs, nano, Wordpad, Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc. But I do care about how they submit a merge request and whether or not they PGP sign their commits.