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> Most mid-level and senior people have not learned the skills to mentor while working remotely. I cannot think of a scenario where if I needed help with somet

• Foobar8568 3y ago
  Be available and not appear busy. Frankly speaking, I love screensharing instead of sharing a screen/desks. So while physical meetings has their places, mentoring is not.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• dogman144 3y ago
  Yes it is almost just literally learning how to do this, vs everyone starts commuting in. Put another way, I get it’s a change, but Eng Managers make filthy money, and maybe they can add Slack comms and related mentorship to the excel and cross-functional working group wiki pages. Excel and email were new once as well.
• ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  >I don't know what new skills someone would have to learn in order to do that. The skill to actually want to do that. Some people are shellfish and don't want to. I've had a mentor who outright refused to do any screen sharing calls with me. He only wanted to communicate in chat. So things that could be cleared up in a 3 minute calls took over 30 minutes of back and forth in chats. I hated him to the core.
  • nick__m 3y ago
    I am pretty sure that your "mentor" would be still be the asshole in an office setting too!
    • ChuckNorris89 3y ago
      Actually he was nicer before the pandemic while we were in the office. He always came by to show me stuff when I called him. I've noticed the behavior of several other colleagues (not everyone) changed while WFH. Many became more distant and hesitant to cooperate and lend a hand. Most wanted to lock themselves in a "don't bother me for anything, let me wrap my work faster, so I can sign out for the day early" kind of state.
      • nick__m 3y ago
        Completely opposite experience to mine but I see how some work environment/culture could foster that behavior.
  • waboremo 3y ago
    Terrible, but some mentors are just like that very reluctant. I will say though even if he only wanted to do chat, most services offer that asymmetrical ability where one is screensharing and both are in chat. Still would have taken longer than purely audio but certainly more immediate than pure-chat. So it's odd he didn't opt for that, it's the method with the least friction.
    • ChuckNorris89 3y ago
      He wanted mostly async chat. So screen sharing into a void wouldn't not have helped.
• janalsncm 3y ago
  This makes the assumption that people will respond on Slack in a timely manner.
  • 49531 3y ago
    Sure, there can be cultural hurdles there, but those exist in the office as well. "Jane has headphones on, she's heads down and will be upset if I bother her now" "I want to ask Steve for help, but he rolls his eyes any time I approach him" "Sam said they'd give me a hand this afternoon, but I can't seem to find them anywhere in the building"
    • janalsncm 3y ago
      Agreed, but the things you’ve mentioned would all clumsily be grouped under the “busy” Slack status even though they mean quite different things. And further, seniors should never be upset that a junior is coming to them for advice, mentoring less experienced people one of the main responsibilities that comes with seniority. (This isn’t to excuse help vampires of course.) So I disagree with with the framing.
• spieswl 3y ago
  I have found that is a pretty good signal for how an organization's culture is set up in regards to helpfulness and camaraderie.
• now__what 3y ago
  If you're one of the "solvers" that gets pinged by random people all throughout the day, you need to learn how to use "do not disturb" and to balance it out with dedicated open time. Otherwise it's easy to get stressed and overwhelmed. Totally learnable, but I've seen a few people on my team take psychic damage from this. Once you learn this though, it's actually easier to do remotely than in-person.