[rightlane]

My juniors thrive in a WFH environment. This is a problem with the culture and the seniors not WFH. The promotion issue is real. But let's be honest, promotion in tech mostly happens by changing jobs. The in the office people are the ones who are really slowing down their career growth.

[foobarian]

I feel like there is a large selfish component with seniors thriving in WFH; the hidden costs are, for one, less impromptu unaccounted for time helping juniors either with tech questions or mentoring. This maybe works for now, but makes me wonder how this will play out when the current generations of workers who trained pre-COVID retire out and the current juniors get into those roles.

Alternatively, what good measures are there to help the current junior roles? I see people saying it's a culture problem but it seems a very new problem with not many publicized solutions.

[jareklupinski]

> what good measures are there to help the current junior roles?

i always make it very clear that anyone can reach me asynchronously whenever they want, and i will always strive to give a clear answer when i'm able to

i think some juniors have been burned by asking the wrong person the wrong thing at the wrong time and believe it was their fault for asking

sometimes people just had a bad breakfast

[rimunroe]

> i always make it very clear that anyone can reach me asynchronously whenever they want, and i will always strive to give a clear answer when i'm able to

This is good, but in my experience being proactive in reaching out to juniors is critical in a remote environment, especially if your company or team doesn't have an obviously healthy culture

[readyman]

As a junior employee, I have no patience for your point.

Going into office is one thing juniors can do about the "problem with the culture" so my stance stays the same until the so-called culture changes.

In my experience, the number of seniors who complain sbout RTO and don't hoard knowledge is tiny.

[rimunroe]

> In my experience, the number of seniors who complain sbout RTO and don't hoard knowledge is tiny.

"Hoarding knowledge" makes it sound like they're intentionally trying to keep knowledge to themselves. I don't think the problem with remote leveling is due to seniors intentionally holding onto knowledge. I do see some senior employees try to hold ownership of a specific area of their work for apparently selfish reasons, but they're a minority.

I've spent a lot of time talking with other seniors (and juniors!) about ways to make sure we're spending time working with mixes of skill levels, but it's a hard problem. Just advertising that you're available to help if anyone needs anything does basically nothing to encourage most juniors to ask. It takes a lot of juniors a long time to lose inhibitions for asking for help, and I think people can often make it to senior levels without learning how to be proactive about offering help.

It does seem easier for most people to ask for help in person. I think one of the causes of this is because even in this field, most people don't grow up doing so much communication and socialization purely using crude text and video calling which have remained mostly unchanged since the 80s or 90s. Most people handle in-person socialization much better, and can read and express cues more naturally there, especially in a work environment. Also, those communication methods have a degree of formality attached to them which feels like a barrier.

Personally, I think it might help a bit if telework software would take more cues from video games (proximity-based chat and virtual environments with rooms and doors). There are some programs for this, but the few I've tried haven't been polished enough to use. The few I've used though did seem to make impromptu collaboration easier, but of course there could have been many reasons for that (e.g. novelty).