[cgio]

CEOs and leadership teams would not mind remote work I believe, at least not as a general rule, given there are benefits to the bottom line, e.g. real estate, other expenses, productivity arguably. What I think is the key concern for leadership teams, is that remote work does not allow for an environment to train the next generation of workers. Most of the experienced people do just fine remotely, but imagine wfh exclusively as a grad. That said, even that concern might be from the perspective of an "old" generation, given young people can probably navigate online collaboration more effectively and therefore adapt to learn the job with less face to face guidance.

[dhx]

What is the benefit of mentoring or guiding less experienced workers through new tasks in person as opposed to remotely with voice calls and screen sharing / live multi-user document editing / similar real time collaboration tools?

I've generally found remote work a better model as all people involved can edit the same document / diagram / model / code at the same time collaboratively, or at least have a better view of a screen than what is projected at low quality on a wall or displayed on a single monitor that isn't large enough for people to read at a distance. Whiteboards are OK for toy problems but are a hindrance for anything complex.

[PoignardAzur]

My recent experience (I've started two different contracts since the pandemic started) is that companies are at lot worse at on-boarding when everyone is remote than when everyone is in the office.

Maybe it's just that we all need to get new habits and adapt to this new medium, and it's only n=2, but so far my intuition is that on-boarding is harder when your colleagues with the relevant experience aren't one office away. Asking questions on Slack just isn't the same.

[cgio]

I don’t disagree and that is largely the consideration behind my closing statement. Nevertheless, keep in mind this makes assumptions on technical acuity of both mentors and mentees and the fact is there is a generational gap between them that might reflect on their ability to use these tools for mentoring relationships. I don’t claim having an answer, but I have been exposed to such discussions at high levels and I have seen people being concerned about this.

[asciimov]

I haven’t had a job do any sort of training in… 20+ years. But then I’ve had some odd luck/experiences at every job I’ve had, except my first one. That first job was when I was 14 and was mowing yards with my neighbor who was a grad student.