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> - ICs & seniors are required to host at least a weekly office hour to assist juniors or teach something of their choice. When I was a junior engineer working

by rcme 3y ago

> - ICs & seniors are required to host at least a weekly office hour to assist juniors or teach something of their choice. When I was a junior engineer working in-person, I was learning from senior engineers multiple times a day, not just once a week.

clnq 3y ago
There are remote-first companies that have 24/7 channels for anyone to ask questions and discuss things with seniors. There are office-first companies with poor training culture. Commitment to training is the deciding factor.
- rcme 3y ago
  Only part of my learning was from direct question answering. Seeing how senior people worked also helped a lot. E.g. over hearing a design discussion or seeing how they debugged outages was very helpful to me. Those things are very hard to recreate remotely.
  - frumper 3y ago
    Those things are easier to recreate remotely. You can see their actual screen instead of watching on a projector or over their shoulder. Pair programming is even easy to do remotely, there are IDEs that support it. Hop in any kind of voice call and they can talk you through what they’re doing as they’re doing it.
    - rcme 3y ago
      What I meant is that I learned a lot watching senior members of the team interact. I was like a fly on the wall during their discussions just because I happened to be sitting near their desks when the discussion started. Or when there was an outage, I could overhear how they were debugging the issue. Also, I've run a remote work company over the pandemic. Maybe you don't feel working remotely is different, but many, many people feel more comfortable approaching someone in person vs. online. In person, you can look at someone, see if they're busy, and, if not, approach to start a conversation. Online, you can never tell if someone is available. There is always an element of rejection when it comes to approaching someone online.
      - frumper 3y ago
        Clearly we differ on how we feel about approaching people. I’d rather get a simple message. When people have to write things they tend to think more about what they want to say. And what you’re describing about the fly on the wall is still simply they aren’t communicating well if they aren’t including coworkers that may only be included for the benefit of learning how to handle situations. One way to handle that is to approach your boss and ask to be included in those situations because you’d like to learn how to respond. Your last line sums up how you feel about remote interactions nicely. I’m sorry, I just don’t find that your feelings about online rejections is a good enough reason to drive into an office.
        rcme 3y ago
        > And what you’re describing about the fly on the wall is still simply they aren’t communicating well if they aren’t including coworkers that may only be included for the benefit of learning how to handle situations. One way to handle that is to approach your boss and ask to be included in those situations because you’d like to learn how to respond. That's kind of the point though. When you're together, you don't need to think about how to include others in the discussion or talk to your manager. It all happens organically. > I’m sorry, I just don’t find that your feelings about online rejections is a good enough reason to drive into an office. Again, this is not my personal feeling. I ran a video conferencing company that served hundreds of thousands of people over the pandemic. I'm telling you the feedback we got from our users. So, you might not be willing to drive to an office for my feelings. But if you're not willing to drive to an office for the majority of your team's feelings, you might just be an asshole?
        frumper 3y ago
        > There is always an element of rejection when it comes to approaching someone online. If your primary reason for wanting to be in office is fly on the wall lurking and not wanting to feel rejected then those aren't very good reasons. Ask to be apart of solutions, groups, teams, emergency responses and projects. You'll learn 10x as much working with those co-workers to solve the problem than you would by listening to some coworkers doing it. > So, you might not be willing to drive to an office for my feelings. But if you're not willing to drive to an office for the majority of your team's feelings, you might just be an asshole? I work in a group of 10 developers and 0 out of 10 want to be in office, but hey, I don't mind if you want to take shots at me. I'm not against working in an office, I just want to have real reasons why it's needed.
    - ZephyrBlu 3y ago
      It's not about the activity, it's about the serendipity. There is no serendipity when you are working remotely.
      - frumper 3y ago
        Take serendipity to your bank and try get a loan with it. Have a real plan.
      - Klinky 3y ago
        Serendipity is not a competent on-boarding or training strategy.
jollofricepeas 3y ago
Obviously, it’s a balance. Because at the same time, ICs working on critical projects shouldn’t be forced to stop every 15 minutes to answer “It’s not working” questions.
- rcme 3y ago
  That seems more like a hiring issue
redeeman 3y ago
and now you may learn from them multiple times a day, not in person, but over the internet
- hedora 3y ago
  And also from people in multiple geographic regions!
  - jollofricepeas 3y ago
    Exactly! That’s a point we often miss when discussing remote work.

by rcme 3y ago

clnq 3y ago

There are remote-first companies that have 24/7 channels for anyone to ask questions and discuss things with seniors. There are office-first companies with poor training culture. Commitment to training is the deciding factor.

rcme 3y ago
Only part of my learning was from direct question answering. Seeing how senior people worked also helped a lot. E.g. over hearing a design discussion or seeing how they debugged outages was very helpful to me. Those things are very hard to recreate remotely.
- frumper 3y ago
  Those things are easier to recreate remotely. You can see their actual screen instead of watching on a projector or over their shoulder. Pair programming is even easy to do remotely, there are IDEs that support it. Hop in any kind of voice call and they can talk you through what they’re doing as they’re doing it.
  - rcme 3y ago
    What I meant is that I learned a lot watching senior members of the team interact. I was like a fly on the wall during their discussions just because I happened to be sitting near their desks when the discussion started. Or when there was an outage, I could overhear how they were debugging the issue. Also, I've run a remote work company over the pandemic. Maybe you don't feel working remotely is different, but many, many people feel more comfortable approaching someone in person vs. online. In person, you can look at someone, see if they're busy, and, if not, approach to start a conversation. Online, you can never tell if someone is available. There is always an element of rejection when it comes to approaching someone online.
    - frumper 3y ago
      Clearly we differ on how we feel about approaching people. I’d rather get a simple message. When people have to write things they tend to think more about what they want to say. And what you’re describing about the fly on the wall is still simply they aren’t communicating well if they aren’t including coworkers that may only be included for the benefit of learning how to handle situations. One way to handle that is to approach your boss and ask to be included in those situations because you’d like to learn how to respond. Your last line sums up how you feel about remote interactions nicely. I’m sorry, I just don’t find that your feelings about online rejections is a good enough reason to drive into an office.
      - rcme 3y ago
        > And what you’re describing about the fly on the wall is still simply they aren’t communicating well if they aren’t including coworkers that may only be included for the benefit of learning how to handle situations. One way to handle that is to approach your boss and ask to be included in those situations because you’d like to learn how to respond. That's kind of the point though. When you're together, you don't need to think about how to include others in the discussion or talk to your manager. It all happens organically. > I’m sorry, I just don’t find that your feelings about online rejections is a good enough reason to drive into an office. Again, this is not my personal feeling. I ran a video conferencing company that served hundreds of thousands of people over the pandemic. I'm telling you the feedback we got from our users. So, you might not be willing to drive to an office for my feelings. But if you're not willing to drive to an office for the majority of your team's feelings, you might just be an asshole?
        frumper 3y ago
        > There is always an element of rejection when it comes to approaching someone online. If your primary reason for wanting to be in office is fly on the wall lurking and not wanting to feel rejected then those aren't very good reasons. Ask to be apart of solutions, groups, teams, emergency responses and projects. You'll learn 10x as much working with those co-workers to solve the problem than you would by listening to some coworkers doing it. > So, you might not be willing to drive to an office for my feelings. But if you're not willing to drive to an office for the majority of your team's feelings, you might just be an asshole? I work in a group of 10 developers and 0 out of 10 want to be in office, but hey, I don't mind if you want to take shots at me. I'm not against working in an office, I just want to have real reasons why it's needed.
  - ZephyrBlu 3y ago
    It's not about the activity, it's about the serendipity. There is no serendipity when you are working remotely.
    - frumper 3y ago
      Take serendipity to your bank and try get a loan with it. Have a real plan.
    - Klinky 3y ago
      Serendipity is not a competent on-boarding or training strategy.

jollofricepeas 3y ago

Obviously, it’s a balance. Because at the same time, ICs working on critical projects shouldn’t be forced to stop every 15 minutes to answer “It’s not working” questions.

rcme 3y ago
That seems more like a hiring issue

redeeman 3y ago

and now you may learn from them multiple times a day, not in person, but over the internet

hedora 3y ago
And also from people in multiple geographic regions!
- jollofricepeas 3y ago
  Exactly! That’s a point we often miss when discussing remote work.