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I love how it has to be some massive conspiracy, not the well-known fact that junior employees and productivity both take a hit with full-time remote work. A lo

• EA-3167 3y ago
  If that's a "well-known fact" then could I trouble you for some sources to that end?
  • johnfn 3y ago
    Just talk to a few? I know plenty of junior developers who've told me that their professional life suffered during remote work over covid.
    • ethanbond 3y ago
      I know plenty who said the reverse. Uh oh!
      • johnfn 3y ago
        Why is it surprising that different people could have different reactions to WFH? Some people liked it. Other people hated it.
        • ethanbond 3y ago
          The original claim that’s being supported is: > the well-known fact that junior employees and productivity both take a hit with full-time remote work Not “some people were less productive, others were more productive,” which is obviously the actual truth.
    • llogiq 3y ago
      So professional work during a worldwide pandemic with all the hardship that entailed suffered...from working remotely? I don't buy that.
    • red-iron-pine 3y ago
      you mean the pandemic that completely upended the entire global economy and society? the one that made entire industries basically vanish? the one that no one was prepared for? like, I been 100% remote since 2015 for orgs that were already equipped for that, and life went on just fine when COVID hit. Jr. Devs at orgs that weren't equipped for remote definitely suffered, in the same way that not having winter tiers or chains would screw you when a sudden blizzard hits Texas.
      • johnfn 3y ago
        > in the same way that not having winter tiers or chains would screw you when a sudden blizzard hits Texas. Doesn't this just prove the point, though? You seem to be saying it takes additional resources and time to make WFH work as effectively as normal, in-office work. Many workplaces are resource-constrained and may not be able to implement those practices.
        • EA-3167 3y ago
          How do those resources compare to the cost of maintaining offices, the costs to workers of commutes and being more or less forced into expensive and crowded urban centers, and the environmental cost of the commute and the property maintenance?
  • Kiro 3y ago
    Let's be real. The reason we all love WFH is because we can slack off. It's so easy to game the system and make it look like we're working when we're not.
    • SantalBlush 3y ago
      The three big reasons for me are: 1. No more commute. 2. No need to move for a new job. 3. Way more real estate options. No longer needing to live inside a major metropolitan area near my job means I can save hundreds of thousands on a house, or pay much cheaper rent. It's a no-brainer.
    • taylodl 3y ago
      Stop projecting your personal failings onto the rest of us. My productivity has never been greater - and I started this career journey in the 80's. Add in the new AI tools and productivity is getting another bump. I guess you're just getting left behind. We won't miss you.
    • ksenzee 3y ago
      If you’re justifying this to yourself because you think everyone else is slacking off at home, you might want to rethink. I am not slacking off—my productivity is at least as good at home as it was in the office, even on days when I’m not at the computer a full eight hours. Judging from what we get done, other people on my team are also not slacking off. But if someone were regularly slacking off, I’d be able to tell—and I’m not even a manager, just a principal who listens at standup. At least wait for a better job market if you insist on playing roulette with your career.
    • ubercow13 3y ago
      I don't think it's any easier, it's just less unpleasant because you don't have to pretend to be working as actively while slacking off. And if this is true it just proof of the merits of WFH. If everyone is 'slacking off' and productivity is basically unchanged, it just shows what a waste of everyone's lives working in the office was.
    • zarathustreal 3y ago
      Sorry to have to be the one to throw ice water on you here: most of your colleagues are in fact working hard and enjoy WFH because they enjoy spending time with their family and working from a comfortable work environment. If we want to talk about conspiracies, let’s talk about management’s belief that everyone producing value is secretly trying to game the system
• toomuchtodo 3y ago
  ~$120B in enterprise value of remote first or full remote companies indicates this isn’t accurate. Remote may pose development and pipeline challenges, but they’re clearly surmountable.
• vidarh 3y ago
  The comment you replied to didn't suggest any conspiracy. They merely suggested that board members on the boards of multiple organisations sometimes will do things that favour one of the companies but is detrimental to the others. As for your "well known fact", I'm not convinced it's either well-known, nor necessarily a fact (I can buy it happens some places, but would question whether it's an inherent limitations or an issue with management in organisations who don't know how to handle remote work)
• ctoth 3y ago
  It's more than three years since most people started working from home. Can you estimate when you expect these impacts to start showing up?
  • Filligree 3y ago
    Speaking for myself, I’m getting the hang of training people remotely. It takes more structure, and it took a year to learn how, but it’s totally doable.
    • duckmysick 3y ago
      Can you share what worked and what didn't when it comes to training people remotely?
      • Filligree 3y ago
        Checklists are the big one. We've got a big spreadsheet of general areas that people should know, each with a lecture attached, but those are for self-study; I go over each one in detail with each new hire in a series of sessions typically lasting ~3 months, at 2-3 sessions per week. Separately, I hold what amounts to office hours 3 times per week, where anyone who feels like it can show up to ask questions—but new hires are encouraged to do so until absolutely certain they don't need to, and also to keep track of questions between sessions. There's more, but this is the part that's easy to explain. What didn't work... crucially, waiting for newbies to ask questions doesn't work; they won't. You need to actively go looking, and also bring up areas they might not even know they ought to ask about.
        • duckmysick 3y ago
          Thanks for the answer. I see the theme is you have to be proactive instead of passively dump info hope for the best. It makes total sense.
  • cm2012 3y ago
    Seriously. GDP and productivity are super high right now.
• usefulcat 3y ago
  Why do you seem to think that those two things are mutually exclusive?
• monkmartinez 3y ago
  The "well-known" fact you speak of is what my wife's boss uses to justify return to office. It's definitely not the massive investment in office furniture, office remodel, and meeting spaces that have been gussied up for impressions of success. No way it's that! /s The fact that senior employees are leaving for remote work ensures junior people are all they have left! Junior people are, shockingly, not as productive as senior people... who would have thought?
  • I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    I moved to a new role in my company a year and a half ago, and it's taken me this long to be confident enough to take responsibility for things that I'm not told explicitly to do. That's really the line between junior and senior in my opinion, both feeling like you have the power to make changes in addition to permission to do so. That transition is hard no matter if you are in the office or not (in the office, for my example) but it really can't happen if a junior is suddenly the senior tech because the real seniors all left.
  • smith7018 3y ago
    Those investments in office furniture, remodels, etc. are already sunk costs though. Why would they be used to justify RTO? If anything, it's more expensive to have people come in and use (read: destroy) furniture and equipment. This is a genuine question. The RTO push has befuddled me for awhile because the money that's already gone into the offices (like the leases) were decided on awhile ago and will be paid out regardless if people come in or not. Perks like free lunch and snacks also cost more when you force people to come in. So I don't really understand the financial aspect of it. Maybe it's management needing people in office to justify their jobs for some reason? I don't know. Edit: I'm staff-level for what it's worth. I've also noticed that this article doesn't actually reflect reality; nearly every job listing I saw this year said that the applicant will have to be in the office 1-5 days a week.
    • tessierashpool 3y ago
      Those investments in office furniture, remodels, etc. are already sunk costs though. Why would they be used to justify RTO? you answered your own question. sunk costs fallacy.
• wongarsu 3y ago
  A conspiracy would involve people working together, conspiring, towards some secret goal. What GP stipulates works just as well if you assume everyone is working on their own in their own best interest. Going by the principles of capitalism or game theory it would be more surprising if this wasn't true and board members overwhelmingly worked for the good of the company instead of their personal wealth
• aerhardt 3y ago
  Well-known facts eh.
• tnel77 3y ago
  I didn’t know it wasn’t possible to mentor junior employees remotely. It’s impossible to assign a mentor, actively check-in on their progress, encourage collaboration, etc. over a computer. I guess I’ll have to tell the junior I’m mentoring that we are doomed. Annnnnnyways, I’ve been having a great time mentoring a junior engineer at my company. We regularly meet to discuss his work and I constantly stress “please bother me if you have questions.” I reach out once a day to ensure he’s good to go and he often reaches out a few times a day for questions. We assign him work that is challenging, but within his skill set and abilities. In summary, anyone saying juniors will suffer either has no idea how to mentor remotely or are just lazy. Adapt or die. Edit: I will add that my company flies all remote employees into the office once a year for the sole purpose of team building. We did our hackathon in person and focused on building those bonds that can help people work better together. It’s technically optional, but who wants to turn down a free mini-vacation?
  • concordDance 3y ago
    > I didn’t know it wasn’t possible to mentor junior employees remotely. Might be possible, but most can't do it from what I've seen. So if you go full wfh your pool of people who can mentor shrinks by a large factor (4x is my bet).
    • no_wizard 3y ago
      IMO most people can't mentor effectively to begin with, its simply a little more obvious when its remote. This is solved by having a structured mentorship program and guidelines, and really good onboarding. Of course, this means businesses have to invest in this sort of thing, and of course, they don't, because they implicitly got it for free by having seniors covering for juniors for so many decades it obfuscated the problem
  • randomdata 3y ago
    The lessons from academia suggest that some students thrive in a remote environment, while others completely fall to pieces. It could be that teachers fear losing their jobs to technology if they are not a prominent fixture in an in-person classroom, thus making that up, but it is also quite plausible that different people are actually different. Finding a student/junior who is able to do well in your business environment at a distance does not imply that it is scalable across all workers businesses need to hire.
• deleted 3y ago
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