[sarchertech]

That lines up with my experience as well. I think though that there is a cutoff where very junior people are almost never going to be highly productive and require fairly constant babysitting.

I think you can mentor/babysit them in a remote environment, but it takes intentional effort.

This is just a symptom of a larger problem though, which is that people try to get useful work out of very junior developers. They should instead treat them as investments that will generate useful work in the future. If you can’t do this, you shouldn’t be hiring juniors.

[doxeddaily]

I agree, if you are hire juniors you need to know what you are getting.

The thing is not all juniors are the same, some are a lot more immediately productive than others. When it comes to remote work it's hard to bullshit, you are either checking things in, or you aren't. You can only go by productivity.