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Keith Rabois, a general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, told The Logan Bartlett Show last week, adding that neither he nor his firm would invest

Keith Rabois, a general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, told The Logan Bartlett Show last week, adding that neither he nor his firm would invest in a venture based on it. Younger workers, he noted, “learn by osmosis” in a way that requires in-person interaction, and supervisors discover hidden talent by watching them. Uh huh right, discovering hidden talents, not micromanagement, no sir!

AHOHA 3y ago
“I need to breath on your shoulders, sir, all day for hours to discover your hidden talent!!” Sounds like a poor management style to me
viraptor 3y ago
> Younger workers, he noted, “learn by osmosis” in a way that requires in-person interaction Having spent a considerable number of hours in the last year explicitly doing work with / training junior staff... That's just silly. Start open streams of your work. Give short presentations. Invite junior people when you do something interesting. It's really not a lot of effort and in-person is definitely not required.
- jwestbury 3y ago
  I spent a couple of pandemic years at Dropbox, working fully remote. My team regularly started up Zoom calls and invited junior engineers to participate in design conversations, troubleshooting, etc., because it helped them to both feel invested in the product and to grow as engineers. The trouble is that this takes explicit effort from senior engineers, whereas in-office teams don't require the same consideration. So, while I fully believe remote work can teach junior engineers as well as in-person work, I don't think it always does teach them especially well, and I suspect that will always be a challenge.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    Why do you think that requires any more explicit effort? In my experience that works the other way - in the office I would need to know if people are coming and organise appropriately large room / do bookings, etc and the whole meeting changes a bit if there's 5 more people observing. Now it's as easy as a slack message "we're talking about / working on Foo at (link), feel free to join (cc @potentially interested people)".
    - orwin 3y ago
      If they had personal offices big enough (we were 2 in relatively big offices for 3 years at my first company), it's effortless. Since then I've worked with big bank and big oil, in cubicles/open space, and it's indeed way harder than it is remotely.
- orwin 3y ago
  Open stream of you working on an interesting part of the project (even the tedious parts) is a great advice. And you get questions that you would never get in person about your configuration (the last one was about passing our oidc provider in the terminal without having Togo to the web page), your plug-ins and your methods. Sometimes you learn more than you teach. Which is a bit harder to do in open spaces/cubicles (my only experience with real office with real doors was when I was a junior and to me, the experience is as good, or even better than WFH if you do not count the commute time.

AHOHA 3y ago

“I need to breath on your shoulders, sir, all day for hours to discover your hidden talent!!” Sounds like a poor management style to me

viraptor 3y ago

> Younger workers, he noted, “learn by osmosis” in a way that requires in-person interaction Having spent a considerable number of hours in the last year explicitly doing work with / training junior staff... That's just silly. Start open streams of your work. Give short presentations. Invite junior people when you do something interesting. It's really not a lot of effort and in-person is definitely not required.

jwestbury 3y ago
I spent a couple of pandemic years at Dropbox, working fully remote. My team regularly started up Zoom calls and invited junior engineers to participate in design conversations, troubleshooting, etc., because it helped them to both feel invested in the product and to grow as engineers. The trouble is that this takes explicit effort from senior engineers, whereas in-office teams don't require the same consideration. So, while I fully believe remote work can teach junior engineers as well as in-person work, I don't think it always does teach them especially well, and I suspect that will always be a challenge.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Why do you think that requires any more explicit effort? In my experience that works the other way - in the office I would need to know if people are coming and organise appropriately large room / do bookings, etc and the whole meeting changes a bit if there's 5 more people observing. Now it's as easy as a slack message "we're talking about / working on Foo at (link), feel free to join (cc @potentially interested people)".
  - orwin 3y ago
    If they had personal offices big enough (we were 2 in relatively big offices for 3 years at my first company), it's effortless. Since then I've worked with big bank and big oil, in cubicles/open space, and it's indeed way harder than it is remotely.
orwin 3y ago
Open stream of you working on an interesting part of the project (even the tedious parts) is a great advice. And you get questions that you would never get in person about your configuration (the last one was about passing our oidc provider in the terminal without having Togo to the web page), your plug-ins and your methods. Sometimes you learn more than you teach. Which is a bit harder to do in open spaces/cubicles (my only experience with real office with real doors was when I was a junior and to me, the experience is as good, or even better than WFH if you do not count the commute time.