[parzivalm]

> Juniors and interns really strugle in a remote environment.

Blanket statements like this are trying to make a multifaceted problem into a single problem. I don't understand why we are always so quick to say underperforming remote junior engineers are underperforming because of remote work. Maybe the problem was Meta went half in on supporting remote as an onboarding ramp and teams did not put the work in to make sure Juniors thrived in a remote environment.

Speaking from experience, If you are truly trying to be a remote company, you adjust as needed to support new employees, junior or not.

[saiya-jin]

I think you both are correct. Take normal graduate, split spacetime continuum into 2 parallel universes, and let 1 join same company remotely and onsite. Unless given company/team is very toxic, graduate who has gazillion questions every day and gets stuck even more will get them answered more easily if he just comes in person to seniors, rather than chasing calls/chats every time he is stuck or uncertain how to decide.

Quick brainstormings, pair programming. I mean its not up to discussion, real world on site is more efficient. Now from perspective of senior always bothered by those pesky juniors with their stupid questions, loud environment etc. its a different story. Company can set itself up to be much more open to fully remote, but its a conscious and continuous process that needs to be accepted by all seniors, people tend to revert to previous way of working.

Personally, I can see this also for seniors who are also onsite. In truly global teams, you are constantly chasing people and teams to do their work, approve processes, deliver stuff etc. Compared to person X who will respond to your email/chat in 4 hours it takes 1 minute including walking to get feedback, understand problem, manage expectations, push things further etc.

[I_AM_A_SMURF]

It really depends on a lot of factors. For somebody who's shy / socially awkward / introvert (lots of those in tech) it's _a lot_ easier asking questions in chat than in person, especially a shared chat with not too many people, it's also way faster than walking across the hallway to catch the person that you need.

In my experience coaching many young engineers in person and remote, the problem is not so much that it's easier for them to ask questions, is that they don't ask questions, like, at all. They are too worried to sound/appear dumb, even when all the senior/staff engineers are super nice. And in a way I understand that, they are unproven, they have to show their worth to everyone else.

My theory is that the idea that early career people don't do well remote is that it's easier for the senior people to forget about them and not check up on them regularly to make sure they're progressing. If a person is sitting close to you and not making progress it's a lot harder to miss. Also the casual "hey everything OK with your problem?" is a lot easier in person than online. That being said, with some adjustments it really doesn't take too much effort on the Tl/Manager side to make sure junior folks don't get stuck.

I've lead a few teams remotely now and the most successful ones were the ones where I started checking up on the most junior ones often, as often as every day, just asking low-key questions like "hey do you have any questions for me? are you stuck anywhere?" for a bit, just to make sure they were feeling OK asking me when they had a problem, and re-routing them to the right person as needed. After a while they feel safe and start doing it on their own, but it might take a while depending on the person.

As an experienced person, I can chat with anybody at the company within minutes, it's so much more productive than chasing somebody in the office (which could be easily 10~20min walk away).

In person is way better for socializing, creating team bonds, etc. but you don't need that every day, a yearly/quarterly team/company offsite is sufficient.

This is my perspective working at companies that are big enough that they would be global anyway. For a smaller company I can see the argument of having everyone in the same office, but even then your giving up a lot to make up for that (commuting, walking around finding the right person) and I don't think that scales well beyond the 1000 people mark.

[papito]

How many people out there randomly zoom with their former coworkers that they never met in real life, after leaving their job?

Your 20s are a critical time for your career to make connections and friendships - in person. You need to be around people, making friends over beers and community lunches, and learning social skills in a professional environment.

Are we that spoiled that the excuse is "I don't like public transportation"?

Do companies take a productivity hit when people are in the office? Probably. And many openly acknowledge that, but asking people to come to the office two times a week is not some sort of wage slavery.

[lopkeny12ko]

> Your 20s are a critical time for your career to make connections and friendships - in person. You need to be around people, making friends over beers and community lunches, and learning social skills in a professional environment.

Okay, sure. But why does this need to happen in the workplace?

And more importantly, why are you advocating for employers to unilaterally declare that this needs to happen in the workplace?

[MikeTheRocker]

Connection doesn't need to happen in the workplace, but the reality is that most people spend a majority of their weekday waking hours working so would be great if building connections there were feasible.

[parzivalm]

> Your 20s are a critical time for your career to make connections and friendships - in person. You need to be around people, making friends over beers and community lunches, and learning social skills in a professional environment.

No one is saying you don't need to be around people, but a job can be just a job. I don't need to make a ton of friends at work to do my job, and the idea that that should be a requirement/expectation needs to stop. It enables the chance for too many unhealthy boundaries to be created young workers that don't know any better. If you start in your early 20's and are made to see everyone as friends, family, etc. Then when someone tries to push you into a 12 hour day, it doesn't seem that bad. You can forge working/professional relationships virtually just as well, if you put the effort in.

Now sure it doesn't work for everyone, but again my argument isn't that one is worse than the other, it is just that we make too many blanket statements. What works for you might not work for me, and these organizations trying to force one or the other is harmful in the end. You can have co-existence, especially in a company the size of Meta, you can have a plenty successful office presence and remote presence.

> Are we that spoiled that the excuse is "I don't like public transportation"?

I don't think anyone said that in this thread... That being said, it shouldn't be a surprising fact that people in US cities dislike public transportation. In a previous job of mine, it was quicker to sit in 45 minutes of traffic outside of Washington DC then take the metro, and I was in an area with supposedly great access to public transit. Maybe if all these companies were serious about their workers' best interests they would do more to help invest in and lobby local governments to support public transportation.

> And many openly acknowledge that, but asking people to come to the office two times a week is not some sort of wage slavery.

If you were hired with the expectation to come into the office x number of days, that is fine. A lot of people were hired with the promise of being able to work remote, so changing that is where it tends to be a bit of a bad situation.

In general this animosity between office work and remote work advocates has gotten out of hand. These can co-exist.

[mehlmao]

I've worked with people (remotely) in the past that I'll still hop on Discord and play video games with.

Working remote lets me make connections and friendships where I live, and have more time to do so than when I was spending hours each day commuting.

[krona]

If that means only hiring at half the rate because of the longer onboarding ritual then that's a good a reason as any not to do remote onboarding for some companies.

[myth_drannon]

But Meta is famous for its "Sink or Swim" cut-throat culture.

[chii]

> you adjust as needed to support new employees

the adjustments may not be possible. People tend to build rapport easier when physically close by, and this rapport is how trust gets built up over time, and only by having this trust do knowledge and institutional culture gets transmitted.

I do believe that junior/new grads who come into a fully remote work place would have a harder time to build trust with existing employees, get less mentorship, and/or find it hard to "gel" properly.