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Technology is often very, very distracting, and everyone feels it. I've noticed that we've hit a point in my team where juniors don't even feel comfortable aski

Technology is often very, very distracting, and everyone feels it. I've noticed that we've hit a point in my team where juniors don't even feel comfortable asking questions in a team channel, because they think it might add to the noise. It isn't just that they don't want to "look dumb", but they genuinely don't want to bother a senior engineer. So, paradoxically, the low-effort nature of Slack has actually created barriers to communication in this case. (I have no idea how common this is, but I suspect, at very big companies, there are similar dynamics.) One solution I've found as a more senior engineer is to force a working session with a junior regularly. Like, we're not there to do anything specific, just work on something together. This ends up becoming a much more comfortable space for them to open up with all their questions. Tech really isn't a direct cause of real social problems, but often just presents distractions, which can add up over time. Phones have just taken us to a point where tech is just always with us, thus, we've hit some kind of "maximum distract-ability" point. But the real solution isn't to really ban new tech, it's just to learn how to identify and avoid letting it distract us further.

Rayhem 4y ago
> Like, we're not there to do anything specific, just work on something together. I keep lobbying for "office hours" like this at every single one of our retrospectives and it gets zero traction. My juniors have mentioned how hungry they are to learn more about the craft and they love it when I drag them into conference rooms for impromptu brainstorming/lecturing, but even then I get no votes for implementing office hours. I'm eternally puzzled.
Waterluvian 4y ago
One thing I found that helps in some cases, that I wish was said (and actually practiced) when I was a junior developer, is, “my main job is to help you get comfortable with everything and help you be successful. Everything else about my job is basically just filler for whenever you don’t need my direct attention. Never ever feel like you’re inconveniencing me because helping you is my job.”
- adambyrtek 4y ago
  > Everything else about my job is basically just filler for whenever you don’t need my direct attention That might be taking it a bit too far?
  - eof 4y ago
    It’s not, if your job is to onboard a new engineer. Those first few months make all the difference. If the “other parts” of your job prevent you from maximally optimizing the productivity of your new coworker, the compounding negative returns on that onboarding engineers time is incredibly expensive. Unlike almost anything else you could be working on, turning someone from nonproductive to productive, or more productive, has compounding effects that can quickly help or hinder the longer term objectives
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    As someone with people who report to me, my #1 job is to make sure they’re effective, happy, productive. Empowering them generates more productivity than me quietly doing stuff myself.
    - Godel_unicode 4y ago
      If you have people who report to you and your main job is enabling them, you’re a manager not an engineer. Which is fine, but also it’s an important distinction to make.
      - Waterluvian 4y ago
        My #1 job takes maybe 30% of my time. Be careful with semantics fixation.
        Godel_unicode 4y ago
        > Don’t get caught up in semantics What does that mean?
eof 4y ago
> One solution I've found as a more senior engineer is to force a working session with a junior regularly. Like, we're not there to do anything specific, just work on something together. This ends up becoming a much more comfortable space for them to open up with all their questions We have had really incredible returns from what we call “hack sessions” which are like you said, essentially hosted by at least one senior engineer. We find something in the moment to discuss, or someone shares their screen and we debug together. If no one has anything, I personally start quizzing people on deep technical details and it usually only takes a single question before the topic naturally evolves toward optimum teaching. By now people look forward to them as a place to bring their friction, so lack of topics is rare.
bratbag 4y ago
We have voluntarily gone back to the office one day a week now, because we find collaboration easier when tech gets out the way and you can just talk to someone directly. Surprisingly, the team has all loved it and we are discussing adding an extra day.
- pojzon 4y ago
  What about remote teams ?
  - mr_tristan 4y ago
    I'm in that boat actually. It really just comes down to the people, like always. The teammates that meet together show respect for the remote folk, so it works. But I've definitely been at places that didn't really have that sensitivity for others, and it sucked.
    - andirk 4y ago
      My previous gig has an onshore offshore team that I interfaced with. Then they would interface with the offshore team. And the offshore team had its own very offshore team (not sure which shores we're on). I felt lucky that most of the onshore offshore team didn't like me much which meant all I needed to do was create the features that they tried and failed to do. It was a symbiotic pile.
Ozzie_osman 4y ago
You can also just create a slack channel just for questions (eg #eng-onboarding), where the sole purpose of the channel is those questions. Lowers the barrier a lot. Even better, you'll see even senior folk pop in to ask questions about parts of the stack or codebase they aren't familiar with.
- pojzon 4y ago
  Ugh this sounds like specific reddit spaced and I dont think it did end well. TBH you land in a situation where you have 40 channels in the company you have to follow and it drains so much energy just to be in the loop. Super hard to focus on anything if you know you can get pinged somewhere and you have to check or reply in timely manner. Add to that emails and PRs and you spend 2/3 of your work day just enabling other ppl or answering questions. Soo tiresome.
  - dogcomplex 4y ago
    Agreed. This is yet another source of distraction for actually getting things done, and turns into side discussions of tangential topics far more often than a useful source of information. Beats wasting everyone's time asking questions in a standup, but should at least be understood to be very asynchronous with no need for timely replies lest it become an attention hog. Might favor just setting aside time for devs to add to a wiki document about their area of the system than just being always available for individual questions.
    - chiefalchemist 4y ago
      Agreed. This is yet another source of distraction for actually getting things done Yes and no. Yes, some individuals might suffer in the short term from the friction. No, the lack of that friction is not good for the team. The context (i.e., article) is collaboration. That's not about individual GTD, it's about the health and long term well being of the team. Granted, there are non-team situations but if size and or scale are involved that's less likely. A non-dysfunctional team has overhead. Skip that and while you may not have a dysfunctional team, you'll have a suboptimal one. Either way, that creates friction. The messy shitty kind.
acedTrex 4y ago
This is what I do, semi regular working sessions where I mostly watch/do my own work
zetalyrae 4y ago
>So, paradoxically, the low-effort nature of Slack has actually created barriers to communication in this case. (I have no idea how common this is, but I suspect, at very big companies, there are similar dynamics.) I always think of this quote[0] from the great Byrne Hobart[1]: >Slack is a bit like Adderall. Ask someone about it the week after they start using it, and they can’t praise it enough. Talk to them six months later, they’re back to baseline but now they have an addiction. And talk to them years after the fact, and they’re just regretful. [0]: https://byrnehobart.medium.com/works-war-on-slack-97ef94264d9c https://byrnehobart.medium.com/works-war-on-slack-97ef94264d... [1]: https://twitter.com/ByrneHobart https://twitter.com/ByrneHobart
- astrange 4y ago
  That is not how Adderall works. Get some exercise and take some magnesium with it.
no_wizard 4y ago
I think a big part of this is we need a new work culture. Slack makes it easy to communicate but we don’t have good patterns in the work place broadly speaking for remote work. So everything is a Zoom meeting, or a virtual chat dump to a channel. We need to embrace more async communication and proper scheduling on team by team basis that works to get open air dialog as needed. These alone help remove barriers. We also need to document everything more so than before, and by orders of magnitude. We just don’t have this as common workplace protocols yet
furyofantares 4y ago
> It isn't just that they don't want to "look dumb", but they genuinely don't want to bother a senior engineer. So, paradoxically, the low-effort nature of Slack has actually created barriers to communication in this case. This doesn't sound new at all. It adequately describes my experience as a junior long ago, back when you had to walk into the senior's private office and interrupt what they were doing.
- throw827474737 4y ago
  Yes.. there are definitely online-people, and offline-people, or text-async-comm people vs personal-comm-people: for one the one way of communication is more convenient, for others the other, and for some there is barely a difference. But this is imo fully orthogonal to Juniors not daring to ask questions, and depends on personality, the environment, the mentors, and maybe also the online- or offline-affinity vs the most prevalent tools, but as far as I observed that is the least impacting it...
bmitc 4y ago
> One solution I've found as a more senior engineer is to force a working session with a junior regularly. Like, we're not there to do anything specific, just work on something together. This ends up becoming a much more comfortable space for them to open up with all their questions. Just wanted to say thanks for doing that. I think it's a great thing to set aside time for, for all parties of senior, mid, and junior. > Phones have just taken us to a point where tech is just always with us, thus, we've hit some kind of "maximum distract-ability" point. Nail on the head, although the VR folks are trying to maximize it more.

Rayhem 4y ago

> Like, we're not there to do anything specific, just work on something together. I keep lobbying for "office hours" like this at every single one of our retrospectives and it gets zero traction. My juniors have mentioned how hungry they are to learn more about the craft and they love it when I drag them into conference rooms for impromptu brainstorming/lecturing, but even then I get no votes for implementing office hours. I'm eternally puzzled.

Waterluvian 4y ago

One thing I found that helps in some cases, that I wish was said (and actually practiced) when I was a junior developer, is, “my main job is to help you get comfortable with everything and help you be successful. Everything else about my job is basically just filler for whenever you don’t need my direct attention. Never ever feel like you’re inconveniencing me because helping you is my job.”

adambyrtek 4y ago
> Everything else about my job is basically just filler for whenever you don’t need my direct attention That might be taking it a bit too far?
- eof 4y ago
  It’s not, if your job is to onboard a new engineer. Those first few months make all the difference. If the “other parts” of your job prevent you from maximally optimizing the productivity of your new coworker, the compounding negative returns on that onboarding engineers time is incredibly expensive. Unlike almost anything else you could be working on, turning someone from nonproductive to productive, or more productive, has compounding effects that can quickly help or hinder the longer term objectives
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  As someone with people who report to me, my #1 job is to make sure they’re effective, happy, productive. Empowering them generates more productivity than me quietly doing stuff myself.
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    If you have people who report to you and your main job is enabling them, you’re a manager not an engineer. Which is fine, but also it’s an important distinction to make.
    - Waterluvian 4y ago
      My #1 job takes maybe 30% of my time. Be careful with semantics fixation.
      - Godel_unicode 4y ago
        > Don’t get caught up in semantics What does that mean?

eof 4y ago

> One solution I've found as a more senior engineer is to force a working session with a junior regularly. Like, we're not there to do anything specific, just work on something together. This ends up becoming a much more comfortable space for them to open up with all their questions We have had really incredible returns from what we call “hack sessions” which are like you said, essentially hosted by at least one senior engineer. We find something in the moment to discuss, or someone shares their screen and we debug together. If no one has anything, I personally start quizzing people on deep technical details and it usually only takes a single question before the topic naturally evolves toward optimum teaching. By now people look forward to them as a place to bring their friction, so lack of topics is rare.

bratbag 4y ago

We have voluntarily gone back to the office one day a week now, because we find collaboration easier when tech gets out the way and you can just talk to someone directly. Surprisingly, the team has all loved it and we are discussing adding an extra day.

pojzon 4y ago
What about remote teams ?
- mr_tristan 4y ago
  I'm in that boat actually. It really just comes down to the people, like always. The teammates that meet together show respect for the remote folk, so it works. But I've definitely been at places that didn't really have that sensitivity for others, and it sucked.
  - andirk 4y ago
    My previous gig has an onshore offshore team that I interfaced with. Then they would interface with the offshore team. And the offshore team had its own very offshore team (not sure which shores we're on). I felt lucky that most of the onshore offshore team didn't like me much which meant all I needed to do was create the features that they tried and failed to do. It was a symbiotic pile.

Ozzie_osman 4y ago

You can also just create a slack channel just for questions (eg #eng-onboarding), where the sole purpose of the channel is those questions. Lowers the barrier a lot. Even better, you'll see even senior folk pop in to ask questions about parts of the stack or codebase they aren't familiar with.

pojzon 4y ago
Ugh this sounds like specific reddit spaced and I dont think it did end well. TBH you land in a situation where you have 40 channels in the company you have to follow and it drains so much energy just to be in the loop. Super hard to focus on anything if you know you can get pinged somewhere and you have to check or reply in timely manner. Add to that emails and PRs and you spend 2/3 of your work day just enabling other ppl or answering questions. Soo tiresome.
- dogcomplex 4y ago
  Agreed. This is yet another source of distraction for actually getting things done, and turns into side discussions of tangential topics far more often than a useful source of information. Beats wasting everyone's time asking questions in a standup, but should at least be understood to be very asynchronous with no need for timely replies lest it become an attention hog. Might favor just setting aside time for devs to add to a wiki document about their area of the system than just being always available for individual questions.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    Agreed. This is yet another source of distraction for actually getting things done Yes and no. Yes, some individuals might suffer in the short term from the friction. No, the lack of that friction is not good for the team. The context (i.e., article) is collaboration. That's not about individual GTD, it's about the health and long term well being of the team. Granted, there are non-team situations but if size and or scale are involved that's less likely. A non-dysfunctional team has overhead. Skip that and while you may not have a dysfunctional team, you'll have a suboptimal one. Either way, that creates friction. The messy shitty kind.

acedTrex 4y ago

This is what I do, semi regular working sessions where I mostly watch/do my own work

zetalyrae 4y ago

>So, paradoxically, the low-effort nature of Slack has actually created barriers to communication in this case. (I have no idea how common this is, but I suspect, at very big companies, there are similar dynamics.) I always think of this quote[0] from the great Byrne Hobart[1]: >Slack is a bit like Adderall. Ask someone about it the week after they start using it, and they can’t praise it enough. Talk to them six months later, they’re back to baseline but now they have an addiction. And talk to them years after the fact, and they’re just regretful. [0]: https://byrnehobart.medium.com/works-war-on-slack-97ef94264d9c https://byrnehobart.medium.com/works-war-on-slack-97ef94264d... [1]: https://twitter.com/ByrneHobart https://twitter.com/ByrneHobart

astrange 4y ago
That is not how Adderall works. Get some exercise and take some magnesium with it.

no_wizard 4y ago

I think a big part of this is we need a new work culture. Slack makes it easy to communicate but we don’t have good patterns in the work place broadly speaking for remote work. So everything is a Zoom meeting, or a virtual chat dump to a channel. We need to embrace more async communication and proper scheduling on team by team basis that works to get open air dialog as needed. These alone help remove barriers. We also need to document everything more so than before, and by orders of magnitude. We just don’t have this as common workplace protocols yet

furyofantares 4y ago

> It isn't just that they don't want to "look dumb", but they genuinely don't want to bother a senior engineer. So, paradoxically, the low-effort nature of Slack has actually created barriers to communication in this case. This doesn't sound new at all. It adequately describes my experience as a junior long ago, back when you had to walk into the senior's private office and interrupt what they were doing.

throw827474737 4y ago
Yes.. there are definitely online-people, and offline-people, or text-async-comm people vs personal-comm-people: for one the one way of communication is more convenient, for others the other, and for some there is barely a difference. But this is imo fully orthogonal to Juniors not daring to ask questions, and depends on personality, the environment, the mentors, and maybe also the online- or offline-affinity vs the most prevalent tools, but as far as I observed that is the least impacting it...

bmitc 4y ago

> One solution I've found as a more senior engineer is to force a working session with a junior regularly. Like, we're not there to do anything specific, just work on something together. This ends up becoming a much more comfortable space for them to open up with all their questions. Just wanted to say thanks for doing that. I think it's a great thing to set aside time for, for all parties of senior, mid, and junior. > Phones have just taken us to a point where tech is just always with us, thus, we've hit some kind of "maximum distract-ability" point. Nail on the head, although the VR folks are trying to maximize it more.