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Not mentioned but I see as a increasingly large problem is mentoring new hires and juniors and seeing them improve and get promoted. It's absolutely just not th
by bamboozled 4y ago
Not mentioned but I see as a increasingly large problem is mentoring new hires and juniors and seeing them improve and get promoted. It's absolutely just not the same anymore and I believe that it will bite many industries hard.
I'm not saying that it's impossible to mentor people online, but here's the issue as I see it...When I physically worked with people, I'd them having trouble, I could see their body language, notice they were coming into to work later, looking unenthused. I'd develop their social skills. The bandwidth was way, way higher. Problems were ok because though I'd go over to their desk, sit with them and teach them things, teach them to communicate, develop their social skills, go get coffee and talk about their problems, they'd ask questions and we might go to lunch together and talk a bit more about things and work through. We'd form a bond. What I'd get out of this bond is more capable people around me at, what felt like, a lower price than with remote work.
Now, mentoring for most people is a way bigger sacrifice. I mean, I could be out riding my mountain bike rather than mentoring newbies or sit on the phone listening to their issues.
I'm also simulating a social scene based on previous work social life. I know what the important of conversing with my peers is like. I remember how to do it. I perpetuate it with online work. Not everyone can do this.
When I worked in an office there was a clear distinction between my two lives, my work life and my free time. I was happy to give my work life and time to others. I went out of my way to do it. Now all my time seems more precious and I don't want to give too much of my free time away. This is great in the short term but it's bad in the long term, I can see it affecting our team negatively already. There is a growing gap between the less experienced people and the people who can learn and grow on their own, autonomously. It's like some people have a level of knowledge that makes them immutable to the isolation of remote work, for them remote work is 100% ok. Others don't have the skills yet to cope. The people who don't have the ability to perform and work autonomously aren't schooled, they're scorned, they're annoying, they're stopping people from accessing their endless free time gained from being good at what they do.
There's a raft of other issues that go with this too, timezone barriers, the fact it's super easy to avoid people so they can hide issues and their feelings with less effort. I could go on. Anyway, I believe this will become more of a problem as more experienced people retire and stop schooling the younger crowd.
Time will tell, it will be interesting to see how all of this pans out. I'm 100% loving remote work , I'm not trying to say there is an inherit issue with it, just going to have to solve this problem, I can only imagine it getting worse over time if younger people stop physically attending college. Good bye another mechanism for developing social skills...