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As a junior that also just started before COVID forced everyone into remote, my experience has been that team culture is the deciding factor. I've always been extremely vocal in communicating ideas, acquiring feedback and asking for help digitally, but my experience has been split for the two teams I've been yet. The first team was just set up as the pandemic hit and thus had all collaboration happen online. This created structures that fit a remote-first approach and even worked after work got hybrid again. All important discussion happened online, we had ways to spontaneously get help and enough formats to get creative. And it worked, I never felt left out, all blockers for everyone got cleared as fast as you would expect and feedback cycles were good. I can't say the same about my second team however. While it's officially hybrid, I'd say 70% are coming into the office every day, while the other 30% (me included) work basically exclusively remote. And it isn't working well, the office people just have their own bubble. They exchange ideas and communicate offline and it's hard to be part of that. I tried integrating digital tools, I tried talking about it, but it just doesn't work. I can plant seeds for new ideas, I can ask for feedback, but the second I communicate it to the office bubble, I'm not part of it anymore. This isn't intentional obviously, but when they talk about stuff at the coffee machine or during lunch, the idea will start developing by itself, while I have no way to take part in it. And who can blame them? If you have a good idea during lunch, why should they not talk about it? And who wants to provide an official protocol for the remote workers about lunch discussions? And then when I then try to talk about the idea a few days later, I always notice that it advanced without any possibility for me to participate. This sucks obviously, because it massively diminishes my influence to bring in and grow my ideas. And while I do get feedback when I ask for it directly, I have noticed that barely anyone actively informs you about the small 1% stuff that you can improve. Which doesn't sound bad, but if you miss an 1% improvement every week, even in a year it will amount to a big enough sum to matter. And I think these 2 things do massively influence a career. You need to be the face of a bunch of good ideas if you want any kind of soft power. You do need the small informal feedback someone gives you when getting a coffee, if you want to be the top 10%. And in some hybrid organizations, you will miss out on that. |
This sort of thing is definitely a problem with many "hybrid" situations.