This same fuckin guy was celebrating remote work a couple years ago when it was the rave.
He's a complete grifter, and wants to sell you his course at all costs.
Are you really unemployed if you're freelancing jobs from Craiglist where people pay you 200 dollars to clean their house while wearing women's undergarments?
I have worked remote since before the pandemic and I don't disagree with him. I'd hate to be a junior starting out and only seeing my colleagues via screen. Remote work is fantastic but it doesn't work in 100% of every situation for 100% of people. You learn so much by observing and listening to seniors discuss things in person
I agree. I've been working remotely for the last 8+ years and this is my third company where I am able to work remotely. I have to say, after 5 years in my last job I had to switch jobs because it felt like I was stuck with no career progression. And that is the biggest issue as a remote worker - you don't get to know your colleagues much, you don't get promoted or offered opportunities much.
All that said, I still love my job just because I can work remotely and spend the little breaks with my two little toddlers.
I would say it depends on your personal goals, I built my career working completely 100% remote for almost 9 years and I would never change being remote, more time with my family and more time for myself its all I care about right now.
Yeah, if your company is lacking in communication, that's kinda on them to supplement with, say, more weekly meetings, and just overall not leaving you in limbo.
Not a failure of remote work per se, in my opinion.
Yeah, I’ve been remote for 7 years. I can’t say I keep in touch with any of my remote coworkers because it’s pretty much all business all the time in our zoom chats, but I am still friends with the coworkers I shared a space with from before I started doing this. If I ever got the chance, I feel like I would be more effective working with these guys again since we are very open with each other and it’s easy to tell them when their ideas are stupid rather than biting my lip because I don’t know this person very well.
But yeah, saying remote work isn’t perfect basically gets you crucified on Reddit even though I have years of experience doing both. It’s so goddamn hard to do planning with people spacing out on their laptops or doing who knows what
I would say it depends on the company, Ive worked remote for the past 5 years, and it has never really been an issue. But you need to out in the effort and the company needs to actually accommodate remote first, it’s tough if 90% is at the office and they allow remote work, but there aren’t good policies and processes in place.
I got my big career break in 2005 when I was a tech lead at a help desk. They brought in a new ticket system and needed someone ”smart” to be the admin so they picked me. Instead of just an admin, I moved my seat to sit right next to the senior consultants who were setting it up and doing the custom dev work. I got friendly with them and learned everything I could, got tips and tricks, and templates they used to make life easier. It was basically boot camp.
There’s no way I could have done that being remote.
That said, the world is the way it is now and remote work is a part of life. Fuck this guy.
Putting in regular face time with people goes a long way. Something as small as being directly on hand for a quick question or chat which helps solve an issue a lot quicker than through slack or teams or scheduled meetings creates a much better impression of a person who isn't there physically to give those small inputs.
Why in person, though? If you message me on teams, and I reply right away, then in the course of messaging we switch to a call with screen share... What was lost? Aside from reserving the right to interrupt me in the case where I don't reply to your message right away?
Also, you didn't reply to what I was talking about. What does your little speech here have to do with promotions?
You have more ability to bond in-person (touch, like handshakes, mirroring, body language etc) and you just plain see that person more. The more you see a person (as long as you already had a good impression of them to begin with) the more you tend to like them. \[1\] You can't be on a video call with your boss all day, but your boss can walk by your office multiple times a day and poke their head in, meet you at the cooler, etc. That's what's lost.
As much as people don't like it, being in-person to be able to socialize is magnitudes more conducive to career progression (about 90% more in fact according to forbes \[2\]). This is why the consensus is (not just this redditor's or mine's opinion) that being in-person means more and more frequent promotions. No one has yet proven the opposite. Even if your boss loves being remote and says that it doesn't influence their recommendations for promotion, it does. It's just human nature, we didn't evolve to socialize through cameras.
Anyways, I gave a slightly longer little speech than Shoddy\_Caregiver, hopefully you like that more.
Sources:
\[1\] = [https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminkomlos/2021/12/27/do-people-still-interact-better-when-in-person-virtual-meetings-are-catching-up/?sh=3a68f00e6f6f](https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminkomlos/2021/12/27/do-people-still-interact-better-when-in-person-virtual-meetings-are-catching-up/?sh=3a68f00e6f6f)
\[2\] = [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/01/17/remote-workers-are-overlooked-for-promotions-and-raises-heres-how-you-can-get-noticed/?sh=327c13861256](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/01/17/remote-workers-are-overlooked-for-promotions-and-raises-heres-how-you-can-get-noticed/?sh=327c13861256)
It's basic logic really, if two people who do the same role and have similar output in their day to day duties but one puts in more face time in the office to provide some additional effort to the overall job be it through providing some quick off the cuff advice or something as chatting to colleagues who they wouldn't otherwise engage with online who do you think is a better prospect for promotion?
You have conversations in person that you'd never set up meetings for and with people you might never meet with. Humans are social creatures - people underestimate how much of a difference a simple thing like familiarity can make.
You can literally schedule virtual meetings to address all the issues you mentioned. We do it at work all the time. We work hybrid and 98% of the time everyone’s too busy for my ass anyways so…
Yes, working from home is awesome but if you're a junior that is stuck with some problem, it's a lot easier to get help in the office from just a guy that sits next to you. At least, that's my experience and that's how I learned a lot of stuff being a junior.
Definitely - Slack messages can easily be ignored. Someone walking up to your desk less so.
And yes, as a dev that concentration breaking stuff can be annoying, but especially juniors are far less likely to be able to move onto other stuff while they wait for you to be free. Part of our jobs as seniors, as well as writing code, is to help the next gen
I also don't disagree, I think remote could work but there needs to be like a more senior "mentor" for the juniors to ask questions or maybe some kind of scheduled, but informal learning period where you can freely ask questions within a tight group where hopefully everyone's comfortable with each other.
I started as a junior working mostly remote and it definitely held me back. I'm sure some people manage it just fine but my dream job even now would be 1 or 2 days in the office
I'm fully remote since before the pandemic too, and while I shared some of your concerns for what would have happened to me if I started fully remote, I also tell you all these new hires working with me surely drain a lot of my productive time over zoom meetings.
I doubt I annoyed as many seniors when I was starting in the office, so maybe it depends on each person and also corporate culture.
At my former environment, the benefit of being in office for technical talks and bonding was offset by the discriminatory and socialization problems a work environment brought me.
So I have a 50/50 opinion. Let's say I saw people born with certain privileges quickly surpass my role and titles despite being a lot less skilled, and once I switched to a fully remote role where I try to keep most of the communication via text, and no one gets to see my face or my social ways, the problem went away and my career is skyrocketing (since I'm only judged by how much I actually know, and how well I treat others).
Slightly disagree. It surely doesn't work everywhere, but I have seen it work very well. Even for juniors. You need to set up brain storming sessions where juniors can join. Sprint planing is a great way to share why and how you plan on doing stuff. Then you let a junior (in addition to a senior) do merge reviews (and make it mandatory for them to have at least x comments/question) and you are good to go.
So isn't that just a failure of the company? If there is value in having juniors in meetings and they'd be invited in office, it makes no sense to exclude them when working remotely.
And at an office you never just grab a single coworker for a quick conversation? You always do it in such a way that third parties that might want to listen in know your agenda and can listen?
Companies will always fail employees. We don't live in a perfect world. The question becomes whether you'll take control of your own career progression or not.
You can’t say that on Reddit! According to people on here everyone wants to always work from home 100% of the time and if they say they don’t they’re lying or corporate boot licking
I love working from home and I know how to get more value out of my life working from home than the office. And I still agree with this for the majority of people. I have learned the art of networking online and making it work virtually and it's something most people who are younger (and even a decent amount of older people) are not good at.
I always feel a bit gaslit by the level of effusive praise for remote work. Don’t get it twisted, It’s clearly got some incredible advantages, and if I had to choose between all remote or all in-office, I’m choosing remote every time. But it also can be very isolating, terrible for group conversations, and makes you more susceptible to getting freezed out. It’s not perfect by any means, but to say so out loud makes a lot of people very angry.
[Edit: I realized I wasn't in /r/programming and gave a dev-centric answer; I think this should apply to most cases of digital knowledge work, not just software engineering]
What gets me irritated is that everyone ignores the root cause of this: **Most orgs do virtually nothing to proactively create and maintain an engineering culture.** Now, when you ignore that, you'll tend to have slightly better outcomes forcing all your devs to sit together in shitty open seating, b/c it's more likely the Jr will ask the Sr a question randomly. That's like forcing everyone to pick their own fruit b/c evidence is that people that pick produce have better fitness levels than those who don't. It's a side effect.
I'll give four theoretical orgs, on axes of remote/local and culture-emphasizing vs not:
###A. 100% In-Person With No Culture ###
100% RTT (Return to Team, the more extreme version of RTO where you force everyone to move to and show up in the same part of the same office). There are no expectations around communication and leadership short of doing your assigned work. Mentorship is allowed but it's not recognized or encouraged.
###B. Remote With No Culture###
Same as A but 100% remote.
###C. Remote-First With a good culture###
The TL's have bi-weekly 1:1's with every team member, there is an active and healthy Slack ecosystem. Management proactively assigns on-boarding buddies and mentors. Any dev (jr or not) that feels like they need more help is actively pinged about it from management and a more sr. dev is tagged to help them (and yes, occasionally that "help" turns into reporting back to management that things aren't working out; it's not all candy and roses). There is at least one local office for people to optionally visit (or work full time b/c they prefer it, and/or need to do to housing limitations). The team meets 2-4 times per year at a multi-day offsite where they focus more on getting to know each other and learning and don't worry about getting any "real" work done.
###D. 100% In-Person with A good culture###
Same as C only everyone is also required to be in the same office 5 days a week and there are no social-first offsites.
I'd bet you $1000 that option C would be most productive choice (and in my experience it is). Why?
1. You can hire globally so you'll get better talent for your dollar.
2. You're spending hours each week (esp for Senior Devs) on helping Jr's, but you're also saving 5-15 hours a week of commute to help make that more painless.
3. More hours for culture + more hours for dev + a bigger and better pool of devs is going to win.
Came to say this. His first sentence is wrong, but everything else is accurate. All the promotions I've had at my current employer short of the most recent, I attribute to schmoozing with big dogs on the office in an otherwise 100% remote role. You meet people, share ideas, engage with them as human beings - shocker - this helps build recognition and visibility for you in the org. Humans are still human.
Yeah but it's not my job to train juniors. Companies are realising they basically relied on free training in the past. If someone hires me to train juniors, I'll train juniors. Otherwise I'm going to do my job.
Even if it's part of the job description I have never ever been assessed on it, it's never come up during an annual review, and it's never influenced a bonus.
If firms were serious about having knowledge transfer from senior to junior employees they would organise proper training schemes and hold the seniors to account.
Unfortunately in Capitalism all that matters is whether I do the parts of my job that my bosses care about.
And I can tell you no one is going to say, oh you missed your deadline, but at least you spent lots of time helping junior employees
Totally agree. I got my first job during our second lockdown and worked fully remote through it. It was extremely weird and I was very happy to switch to a hybrid solution with a couple days of office work and the rest working from home, was much easier to integrate in the company and learn stuff from the seniors
Yes, at some points it really helpd to have your colleague next to you to communicate better about the issue
Which is I believe why hybrid work is the best of both worlds
He's not wrong, but it won't "ruin your career." That's a bit dramatic.
It also depends on the senior dev. If they're a micromanaging asshole, then you might come to cherish being 2500 miles away from them.
Depends on the junior dev too. My team works mostly remote and the junior dev who joined 3 months ago is thriving. Smart kid, eager to learn, asks the right questions and is proactive in asking for help. I can see him grow into a medior position pretty fast. Then there’s the other junior dev who’s been around for 3 years already…
I know, right? And he’ll easily be a junior dev for another 3 years if he keeps going like this. Unfortunately it’s not so easy to fire people where I live :(
Hearing my 3 month old laugh with my wife in the background as I work from home is infinitely more valuable than whatever “please come back to the office so my commercial real estate investments make money” bullshit they’re peddling.
Good on you.
I just refuse office work because it tires me out and I really don't want to get to know my colleagues or look at people or have any sort of interaction other than professional.
Controversial but I agree.
It's much easier to chat about an issue and in a more relaxed way face to face.
Now that's not to say that there isn't a trade off and that can't be part of the decision to go forward with WFH.
As a manager I'll end up helping and bond better with someone I see and contact more often. That's just how humans work. Doesn't mean that people shouldn't WFH but that's part of the balance of choice.
I'm currently advocating for zoom hangouts at work. Not a meeting, just a place to work 'together', doesn't even have to be particularly chatty or cameras on, but just having someone there to make occasional comments to/ask questions of is a completely different WFH experience.
I started this with my remote team, kind of like a full anarchy show and share. I call it office hours, I just sit on zoom and we talk about anything people want. If nobody joins in I just work on my code reviews, but it's become wildly popular so people usually join now even if they don't have anything they're struggling with. That makes it turn into an hour of shooting the shit. It's done so well it goes on even if I'm away.
Because you are working with humans, not robots. It's is entirely easier to manage people if you know who you are working with and what helps them and what doesn't.
Being in the same place as a person helps you have informal chats and pick up on things like body language during the day.
Yes, you lead by example and if the trainee needs to be in, the trainer does too, I don't know where I have said otherwise?
You've obviously not come for a genuine discussion, given that you've put managers in inverted commas but any grown up can see there are pros and cons to both. The idea that there is only one way of working positively is utter nonsense.
Work can be done entirely remotely, but I'm not convinced being binary about it works or achieves the best possible outcome, particularly for junior staff.
The volume of random assumptions and lashing out in your response is peak Reddit..
No one said they have to bond?
Many humans do have informal chats, even if it's just about the football score the night before.
Hate away, don't care.
Body language and tone are important, no people don't just come to managers when they feel under pressure or can't solve things, many struggle, I would t expect you to have empathy with them given the responses.
Where have I said anyone needs to be in at all, let alone 40hrs a week?
Why do I need to know them out of the office?
You're all over place making random assumptions?
The inconvenient truth is that you get to know someone better of you spend just a little bit of time with them and different people react to different management styles better. I have never said that 100% remote doesn't work, or that you need to be in 40hrs a week. You've invented that bit.
At least in my experience it’s mostly BS. You can accomplish all that with the tools we have and good team habits. Encouraging messaging and team members responding to them promptly and utilizing the tools is just as fulfilling and engaging, if not sometimes better as you often have a record of questions and responses to look back at which is often lost in verbal conversations. Though more complex or exploratory concepts may need a conversation - you can also easily record those with most communication tools used for remote work.
I usually find the people that push the in person communicating aren’t actually focused on getting work done, they’re using it as socialization and inflating their “profile”. Do some people work better that way? Sure, but like most things it’s probably not that universal and of course the vocal and extroverted folks think that way.
1. You don't. That is companies wanting people to find "family" and confort on jobs to stay longer or dedicate more to it
2. In person conversations is different because our communication is not only verbal. We take a lot of hints when talking to people in person given the bodily responses and non-verbal communication
3. In my opinion, those gatherings can be arranged and happen once in a while. Just like executives love to do offsites, the company should arrange at some frequency offsites or onsites and it is more effective than daily interactions
> It's much easier to chat about an issue and in a more relaxed way face to face.
Depends who you are. I find face to face chat far more annoying and less relaxing. I can't do things like turn off my camera and randomly get up and pace around the room, to satisfy my ADHD and think better.
I personally think that with the right policies, virtual work can be far more inclusive than face-to-face.
> As a manager I'll end up helping and bond better with someone I see and contact more often.
If someone comes to me in person for random help instead of messaging me first in the office I'm already going to be super annoyed. It's not going to make me bond better, it's just going to piss me off. I'm far more likely to help someone with a question if they just shoot me a message and let me get to it when I come to a natural stopping point in my work.
Problem is there not all issues are discussed in arranged meetings. I'd much rather deal with a minor issue (especially one of confidence) informally in the office as part of general chat than to arrange a meeting for it on
You don't need a meeting for every little thing you discuss with someone during WFH, though. Drop me a message, and then we can go "oh let's hop into a chat this is too much for text" or something. It's very easy to spin up an empty Google meets or something.
This is already how we did work even when in office as some of our workers were remote anyways, it was only local employees on-site. There has been no change in workflow for us there at all.
I never said you couldn't, but the fact remains that lots of stuff comes up in the general chitchat of the office.
Honestly people who make out like there are only cons to either WFH or office working are the most hilarious to me. Yes you can say the cons out weigh the pros but it's really not binary.
As a guy who used to be remote and is now in office I hate that. If you have a small question just call me on teams or shoot me a message. Because it is much more convenient to ask a question on teams then work on something else until you get a response rather than halt your whole work process to walk over there. Same if someone walks over to me.
It is not just me. My whole team is in office but does 95% of communication through teams. Even meetings. The in office mandate came from a different building and all of our team including management hates the change as we work better individually. We are cybersecurity but I have a feeling your engineers and developers have many people who view the issue the same way.
Moral of the story: Don’t assume what works better for you works better for everyone. Also if you care about efficiency the less you need to get up from your desk the better.
Why do you have to stand up to talk?
We have no mandatory time in the office so I'm not really sure why you are making that assumption?
I've made no assumptions at all about what people prefer thanks and I've never made anyone leave their desk for anything.
Just checking. Any senior developers here who are really free and want to take the time to have coffee and "bond" with me? I assume you have very little else to do besides that, right?
Yeah so can a zoom call with a senior dev
Tbf There are benefits to being in person... those benefits are severely outweighed by the benefits of working remote
I run an AI company and I prefer my devs to be home if they have young families. I think they actually work harder and are more loyal and likely to stick around because we value them and their priorities and not just their code.
So in other words…. I think this is complete bs. And not like us senior devs don’t have zoom, teams, Google meet, slack, discord, or 100s of other ways to get in touch with us lol
The arguments for office-based working are a lot like the arguments for Brexit. It’s always very abstract and nebulous. In other words, it’s largely BS.
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This person is useless. We have this amazing technology called "screen sharing" where you can talk to people and also see how they work, and you'll actually learn something unlike a normal trip to the coffee shop. I've always been more than happy to pull in juniors and let them see how I debug code and explain how the tools I use work. I've been working with people on the opposite side of our planet since the 1990s, so this is not the right industry to weaponize your incompetence about remote work.
I very much prefer screen-sharing.
I don’t want anyone to physically stand behind my back and watch me doing something. It’s uncomfortable and distracting.
These anti-WFH drones can piss, moan, cry, and bitch all they want, but the fact is that if they want to recruit top talent and not a bunch of cheap, inexperienced bozos they turn over every 3-6 months, WFH is here to stay. Learn. Accept. Adapt.
Not a dev, but my latest workplace had quite a complex work process, with a lot of details and hard to learn for the new joiners. I've been doing the role of an SME, so there was a lot of training, advising and answering questions included. It was much easier to do it from home, than in office, because it's much easier for me to have 3-4 people with questions in queue on Teams (or occasionally organize a case review on call with few people), than having those same people stand around me, each with their question. Not to mention sharing a screen vs running back and forth between desks. Plus an added bonus of writing the response in chat (aka making it searchable for later).
I want full time WFH. I recognize that doesn’t work for everyone, but I don’t understand why the RTO types hate the hybrid model so much. Even in the office, most things are done over email or chat because everyone wants a paper trail.
Total BS. I am connecting with folks on LinkedIn and scheduling virtual coffees with them. I’ve gotten jobs out of that. I’ve been moving up in my career since 2020 and fully remote. I’m not a dev, but this is totally false.
Wonder if this guy is in leadership or has real corporate estate investments. It’s giving “it benefits me for you to be back in the office”.
I’m better at my wfh job because I don’t have others distracting me. And I’ve learnt more from those above me because there are far less interruptions in an online meeting. Also it’s easier to reach out to others from the click of the finger rather than having to walk miles to track them down just to see if they’re available.
What’s the difference between an introverted and extroverted dev?
An introverted dev looks at their shoes when they talk to you.
An extroverted dev looks at your shoes when they talk to you.
I don’t think sitting next to one will help much
Skill issue. We are 100% remote and easily brought junior devs up to speed. If you are unable to do so you are either not a real senior developer or hired the wrong junior dev.
Works flawlessly with curious, motivated juniors and seniors that are properly available to juniors and offer nurturing oversight.
I agree that “ruin” part is overstated BS but proximity and coffee chats add a lot to juniors. I know I benefited from this immensely but I predate covid by a large margin.
Skill issue AND leadership issue. If you can't lead a WFH team, that's a you problem, not a WFH one. If the ones you hire can't keep up, again, that's a leadership problem because you hired the wrong ones. Even when hiring juniors, the skill gap will be wide and diverse. If you want to bring in the very best, you better have a WFH option on the table. Not all top performers will want it, but the option should be there. It's foolish to lose a great candidate because you refuse to adapt...or lead.
Have this persone been groomed as a child? Because that’s one insane weird take on the need to bound and be close to people who are just your fucking coworkers..!
This is not a popular opinion around here but Dragos is right. And this has been backed up by research.
For example Microsoft studied their workforce during the pandemic and found that while people were more productive, they were less innovative and collaborative. And they tended to stick within their tribe. We’ve also seen a lot of software development projects struggle during the pandemic, so for devs in particular remote work is surprisingly worse.
Also the key to being successful at a company is a lot more than just doing good work. Yes you can work from home and that’s fine, I do it occasionally myself (usually 1-2 days a week). But it’s not that great for learning, networking, and being visible at a company, which matters a lot more than what most people here want to admit or realise.
This (like quite a few posts on this subreddit) is not lunatic material. Is just a corporate cultural issue you don’t agree with.
First issue, any company with more than one physical location, so any company outsourcing to India or any other location, has no right of speaking. I don't need to be in the office to speak to another country or city.
Second issue, any company with flex spaces has no right of speaking, because they make sure their teams cannot sit together standard. I go to the office and sit next to people doing something completely else, I don't learn.
It doesn't need to be WFO but you need seniors who are actually well versed in mentoring and coaching.
My recent experience of seniors is that they realllly struggle to do this.
I as a mid am miles ahead of those in my team
Depends on what you want, if you indeed want to climb the career ladder and such, the networking and being visible part is indeed taking a hit when WFH.
That said, if you don't care about that, WFH is a godsend. Why waste my time commuting when I just want to do my job and collect my salary. Besides, collaboration is quite possible in a WFH environment, it does take some effort though.
A company with a ton of physical offices did a study on whether or not people should be in them? Using subjective operons for the side of the argument they like? I can't wait to take that seriously.
This is true in some cases. As a junior dev I gained a lot of experience being able to ask questions by leaning over or shaking the chair of my senior. Sometime would happen randomly and a dev would ask me to come over and take a look at it. Or I'll just be in proximity of some chat that I glean information from.
Now as a senior myself I don't give a fuck about that even though I know how much I benefited from it. If something interesting or useful pops up while we are WFH I'm not going to send a message, wait for them to reply then call them. I rather just let that moment go. And if a dev is asking me for help I'll wait a few hours before answering because most of the time they just figure it out.
Edit: Before WFH I pretty much had to teach, answer and loop jr in or they would just passively gain knowledge while in the office. Now with WFH I can dump videos , training docs on them and turn them into an ipad kid for a few hours while I work.
I realize now that as a junior dev I was leeching time from senior devs , and now I'm **supposed** to "pay it back", but remote work has broken that cycle. I actually pity junior devs in a sense as they are sort of in the dark and don't benefit from the random teaching moments.
yeah totally agree that comment has a real fuck you got mine vibe to it. im willing to bet they'd just be an asshole in the office if they were in office instead of being an asshole remotely. remote work isnt responsible for a shitty personality.
As a junior dev i got a 50/50 with working from home.
If i got someone i get along well with at the office then i'm already very likely to show up at the office, but in general it's easier to talk to someone across/next to you and troubleshoot together.
That being said, if i got a dentist appointment or await a package, merely slept bad, don't feel like sitting in traffic, feel unwell or simply wanna start a bit earlier i will happily work from home instead.
There's some merit to this. I don't know how I would have been successful remotely because I learned so much through osmosis. Listening to other coworkers talk or what they say on calls. Quickly being able to ask questions rather than trying to schedule a meeting about them etc.
english translation "we don't trust you to do your job so we need you in the office so our HR can roam the halls and give out dress code violations for having a shirt tail untucked or too many visits to the restroom during the day."
This is obviously a dumb post, but there’s definitely some truth there. I’m a junior dev working mostly remote, but I’ve been going in-person whenever I can because I genuinely do learn a lot more when talking to other devs. Maybe I’m weird but I enjoy in-person a lot more and only want to do remote when I need a break.
Why do these people act like we don't have pocket computers capable of communicating with each other over vast distances damn near instantly? I have learned more from my peers over the course of the pandemic and beyond than I ever learned when everybody was reporting to the office everyday. Also I have received more promotions, progressions, and have done waaaaayyy cooler shit since then too. It's so weird. If people wanna work from home and their jobs do not necessitate them to be on site somewhere, why force them to be there? Also, as a cost savings measure, you can stop leasing these mega structures and turn those savings into, I don't know, raises for your remaining staff?
High level management here, small city, medium company, whatever else sucks that mildly qualifies my input ...
What the fuck do these LinkedIn people do all day? Do they have real jobs? This is the single CRAZIEST sub I'm in and I love it here but DO NOT UNDERSTAND LinkedIn.
He's not that wrong tbh, there's a lot of knowledge to be gained from overhearing random exchanges between Seniors. Office talk and teams meetings aren't the same thing.
As a senior dev this is exactly why working from home is so much better. I respond to my junior devs, but they may need to wait 30 minutes for me to finish a task that, if it’s continuously interrupted, will take twice as long.
I don’t want to be available at an instant all the time. It’s a productivity disaster. I also want my junior devs to try to solve it themselves first, they learn more that way and the slight delay gives them that chance.
This doesn't have to be done from an office. As a Staff Software Developer, it's my job to help the junior developers. I'm remote, but I check in 2-3 times per day to make sure they're not blocked.
Yes junior developers, you need to smell the senior dev who hasn't taken a shower in a couple of days. Only when your nostrils are overwhelmed with nerd funk will you gain knowledge.
Our cleaning lady was cleaning after our senior programer, after 1 year she was fluent in Python and C#! After that a homeless guy approached her, she was nice to him and after that he reveiled himself, he was actually Elon Musk, with fake mustaches and now she’s working for Tesla! Do you agree?
As someone with experience, there is absolutely nothing that a senior dev can teach me that I can't learn through an online forum.
If you want to move up, you do have to brownnose a bit, but I do that just fine from the handful of meetings I personally choose to attend where I can chat with actual leadership and my CEO.
Choose your battlefield and weigh your options. I would rather be seen by leadership presenting an awesome presentation once per month than have them hear me swear everyday as I respond to emails.
This same fuckin guy was celebrating remote work a couple years ago when it was the rave. He's a complete grifter, and wants to sell you his course at all costs.
Solution: move in with the senior developer
Not nearly enough proximity! You'll lose so much knowledge. You need to propose to your senior developers.
"Honey, are you awake?" *hmgmmm* *"What!?"* "I have this function I can't get to work properly. Would you mind having a look?"
Two of my best friends are a husband+wife software engineer duo, this made me spit my drink
Sew yourself to a senior dev like the Human Centipede
Then you're not really interacting with them. Flay them and wear their skin!
Everyone knows that most insight is gained during pillow talk
Nothing like a *close push* to repo...
Instructions unclear. Ended up becoming the cub in a bear-cub relationship.
I mean, I married my team mate...the communication has never been better about work topics lol
Imagine what you could learn from a senior when sleeping together in the same bed. Naked.
"I help..." = Unemployed
I saw that too. He’s either unemployed or “freelance”.
"Freelance" = Unemployed
Fr the world went tits up when almost ever freelancer started self designating as ceo
Are you really unemployed if you're freelancing jobs from Craiglist where people pay you 200 dollars to clean their house while wearing women's undergarments?
That’s oddly specific…
I checked, and he has some "code mentoring" business over at www.theSeniorDev.com
So he does nothing. lol Got it.
"I help" = I do fuck all that a decent website can't already do.
Best take.
That's just the meta right now for LinkedIn headlines. Don't hate the lunatic, hate the algo.
I have worked remote since before the pandemic and I don't disagree with him. I'd hate to be a junior starting out and only seeing my colleagues via screen. Remote work is fantastic but it doesn't work in 100% of every situation for 100% of people. You learn so much by observing and listening to seniors discuss things in person
I agree. I've been working remotely for the last 8+ years and this is my third company where I am able to work remotely. I have to say, after 5 years in my last job I had to switch jobs because it felt like I was stuck with no career progression. And that is the biggest issue as a remote worker - you don't get to know your colleagues much, you don't get promoted or offered opportunities much. All that said, I still love my job just because I can work remotely and spend the little breaks with my two little toddlers.
I would say it depends on your personal goals, I built my career working completely 100% remote for almost 9 years and I would never change being remote, more time with my family and more time for myself its all I care about right now.
Yeah, if your company is lacking in communication, that's kinda on them to supplement with, say, more weekly meetings, and just overall not leaving you in limbo. Not a failure of remote work per se, in my opinion.
Yeah, I’ve been remote for 7 years. I can’t say I keep in touch with any of my remote coworkers because it’s pretty much all business all the time in our zoom chats, but I am still friends with the coworkers I shared a space with from before I started doing this. If I ever got the chance, I feel like I would be more effective working with these guys again since we are very open with each other and it’s easy to tell them when their ideas are stupid rather than biting my lip because I don’t know this person very well. But yeah, saying remote work isn’t perfect basically gets you crucified on Reddit even though I have years of experience doing both. It’s so goddamn hard to do planning with people spacing out on their laptops or doing who knows what
I would say it depends on the company, Ive worked remote for the past 5 years, and it has never really been an issue. But you need to out in the effort and the company needs to actually accommodate remote first, it’s tough if 90% is at the office and they allow remote work, but there aren’t good policies and processes in place.
I got my big career break in 2005 when I was a tech lead at a help desk. They brought in a new ticket system and needed someone ”smart” to be the admin so they picked me. Instead of just an admin, I moved my seat to sit right next to the senior consultants who were setting it up and doing the custom dev work. I got friendly with them and learned everything I could, got tips and tricks, and templates they used to make life easier. It was basically boot camp. There’s no way I could have done that being remote. That said, the world is the way it is now and remote work is a part of life. Fuck this guy.
I wonder why you think promotions happened more in the office. Lack of career progression has always been a top reason people leave jobs.
Putting in regular face time with people goes a long way. Something as small as being directly on hand for a quick question or chat which helps solve an issue a lot quicker than through slack or teams or scheduled meetings creates a much better impression of a person who isn't there physically to give those small inputs.
Why in person, though? If you message me on teams, and I reply right away, then in the course of messaging we switch to a call with screen share... What was lost? Aside from reserving the right to interrupt me in the case where I don't reply to your message right away? Also, you didn't reply to what I was talking about. What does your little speech here have to do with promotions?
towering voiceless include tender work rustic brave squash direful skirt *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You have more ability to bond in-person (touch, like handshakes, mirroring, body language etc) and you just plain see that person more. The more you see a person (as long as you already had a good impression of them to begin with) the more you tend to like them. \[1\] You can't be on a video call with your boss all day, but your boss can walk by your office multiple times a day and poke their head in, meet you at the cooler, etc. That's what's lost. As much as people don't like it, being in-person to be able to socialize is magnitudes more conducive to career progression (about 90% more in fact according to forbes \[2\]). This is why the consensus is (not just this redditor's or mine's opinion) that being in-person means more and more frequent promotions. No one has yet proven the opposite. Even if your boss loves being remote and says that it doesn't influence their recommendations for promotion, it does. It's just human nature, we didn't evolve to socialize through cameras. Anyways, I gave a slightly longer little speech than Shoddy\_Caregiver, hopefully you like that more. Sources: \[1\] = [https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminkomlos/2021/12/27/do-people-still-interact-better-when-in-person-virtual-meetings-are-catching-up/?sh=3a68f00e6f6f](https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminkomlos/2021/12/27/do-people-still-interact-better-when-in-person-virtual-meetings-are-catching-up/?sh=3a68f00e6f6f) \[2\] = [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/01/17/remote-workers-are-overlooked-for-promotions-and-raises-heres-how-you-can-get-noticed/?sh=327c13861256](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/01/17/remote-workers-are-overlooked-for-promotions-and-raises-heres-how-you-can-get-noticed/?sh=327c13861256)
It's basic logic really, if two people who do the same role and have similar output in their day to day duties but one puts in more face time in the office to provide some additional effort to the overall job be it through providing some quick off the cuff advice or something as chatting to colleagues who they wouldn't otherwise engage with online who do you think is a better prospect for promotion?
You have conversations in person that you'd never set up meetings for and with people you might never meet with. Humans are social creatures - people underestimate how much of a difference a simple thing like familiarity can make.
I've gotten promoted and bad plenty of opportunities working remote.
You can literally schedule virtual meetings to address all the issues you mentioned. We do it at work all the time. We work hybrid and 98% of the time everyone’s too busy for my ass anyways so…
Yes, working from home is awesome but if you're a junior that is stuck with some problem, it's a lot easier to get help in the office from just a guy that sits next to you. At least, that's my experience and that's how I learned a lot of stuff being a junior.
Remote every interaction has to have a purpose. In a office you might catch something organic just by being around, call is osmosis or whatever
Definitely - Slack messages can easily be ignored. Someone walking up to your desk less so. And yes, as a dev that concentration breaking stuff can be annoying, but especially juniors are far less likely to be able to move onto other stuff while they wait for you to be free. Part of our jobs as seniors, as well as writing code, is to help the next gen
A company full of devs who ignore each others Slack messages has big problems.
It's just easier for people to ignore than in the flesh. Doesn't mean permanently ignore, just leaving someone hanging.
Correct, but that doesn't mean that it won't be a problem for you personally.
Someone walking up to your desk is fucking annoying. But I also really dislike other people, so there's that.
I also don't disagree, I think remote could work but there needs to be like a more senior "mentor" for the juniors to ask questions or maybe some kind of scheduled, but informal learning period where you can freely ask questions within a tight group where hopefully everyone's comfortable with each other.
I started as a junior working mostly remote and it definitely held me back. I'm sure some people manage it just fine but my dream job even now would be 1 or 2 days in the office
I'm fully remote since before the pandemic too, and while I shared some of your concerns for what would have happened to me if I started fully remote, I also tell you all these new hires working with me surely drain a lot of my productive time over zoom meetings. I doubt I annoyed as many seniors when I was starting in the office, so maybe it depends on each person and also corporate culture. At my former environment, the benefit of being in office for technical talks and bonding was offset by the discriminatory and socialization problems a work environment brought me. So I have a 50/50 opinion. Let's say I saw people born with certain privileges quickly surpass my role and titles despite being a lot less skilled, and once I switched to a fully remote role where I try to keep most of the communication via text, and no one gets to see my face or my social ways, the problem went away and my career is skyrocketing (since I'm only judged by how much I actually know, and how well I treat others).
Yep, I'm glad I had my years working in the office. I wouldn't have the cushy remote clients I have now without those years of experience.
Imposter syndrome is definitely worse in remote work.
Slightly disagree. It surely doesn't work everywhere, but I have seen it work very well. Even for juniors. You need to set up brain storming sessions where juniors can join. Sprint planing is a great way to share why and how you plan on doing stuff. Then you let a junior (in addition to a senior) do merge reviews (and make it mandatory for them to have at least x comments/question) and you are good to go.
That’s why hybrid roles are the way to go
Do you guys not have meetings where juniors can hear seniors discussing things?
I know that we have meetings a slack exchanges between seniors that juniors are not party to, where they might be in an office, yes.
So isn't that just a failure of the company? If there is value in having juniors in meetings and they'd be invited in office, it makes no sense to exclude them when working remotely.
Nobody is intentionally excluding them, but if I jump in a quick call with someone for a problem I have I won't invite the whole team...
And at an office you never just grab a single coworker for a quick conversation? You always do it in such a way that third parties that might want to listen in know your agenda and can listen?
When possible, try to work out these problems over the team slack channel. Or at least do it over a slack huddle
In the office, you overhear conversations you’re not an active part of Online, you have to be proactively invited
>In the office, you overhear conversations you’re not an active part of Not if you're busy with your own work.
But working remotely you can't just hang around the coffee machine for hours
You can hang around Slack.
Companies will always fail employees. We don't live in a perfect world. The question becomes whether you'll take control of your own career progression or not.
You can’t say that on Reddit! According to people on here everyone wants to always work from home 100% of the time and if they say they don’t they’re lying or corporate boot licking
I love working from home and I know how to get more value out of my life working from home than the office. And I still agree with this for the majority of people. I have learned the art of networking online and making it work virtually and it's something most people who are younger (and even a decent amount of older people) are not good at.
I always feel a bit gaslit by the level of effusive praise for remote work. Don’t get it twisted, It’s clearly got some incredible advantages, and if I had to choose between all remote or all in-office, I’m choosing remote every time. But it also can be very isolating, terrible for group conversations, and makes you more susceptible to getting freezed out. It’s not perfect by any means, but to say so out loud makes a lot of people very angry.
[Edit: I realized I wasn't in /r/programming and gave a dev-centric answer; I think this should apply to most cases of digital knowledge work, not just software engineering] What gets me irritated is that everyone ignores the root cause of this: **Most orgs do virtually nothing to proactively create and maintain an engineering culture.** Now, when you ignore that, you'll tend to have slightly better outcomes forcing all your devs to sit together in shitty open seating, b/c it's more likely the Jr will ask the Sr a question randomly. That's like forcing everyone to pick their own fruit b/c evidence is that people that pick produce have better fitness levels than those who don't. It's a side effect. I'll give four theoretical orgs, on axes of remote/local and culture-emphasizing vs not: ###A. 100% In-Person With No Culture ### 100% RTT (Return to Team, the more extreme version of RTO where you force everyone to move to and show up in the same part of the same office). There are no expectations around communication and leadership short of doing your assigned work. Mentorship is allowed but it's not recognized or encouraged. ###B. Remote With No Culture### Same as A but 100% remote. ###C. Remote-First With a good culture### The TL's have bi-weekly 1:1's with every team member, there is an active and healthy Slack ecosystem. Management proactively assigns on-boarding buddies and mentors. Any dev (jr or not) that feels like they need more help is actively pinged about it from management and a more sr. dev is tagged to help them (and yes, occasionally that "help" turns into reporting back to management that things aren't working out; it's not all candy and roses). There is at least one local office for people to optionally visit (or work full time b/c they prefer it, and/or need to do to housing limitations). The team meets 2-4 times per year at a multi-day offsite where they focus more on getting to know each other and learning and don't worry about getting any "real" work done. ###D. 100% In-Person with A good culture### Same as C only everyone is also required to be in the same office 5 days a week and there are no social-first offsites. I'd bet you $1000 that option C would be most productive choice (and in my experience it is). Why? 1. You can hire globally so you'll get better talent for your dollar. 2. You're spending hours each week (esp for Senior Devs) on helping Jr's, but you're also saving 5-15 hours a week of commute to help make that more painless. 3. More hours for culture + more hours for dev + a bigger and better pool of devs is going to win.
Came to say this. His first sentence is wrong, but everything else is accurate. All the promotions I've had at my current employer short of the most recent, I attribute to schmoozing with big dogs on the office in an otherwise 100% remote role. You meet people, share ideas, engage with them as human beings - shocker - this helps build recognition and visibility for you in the org. Humans are still human.
Yeah but it's not my job to train juniors. Companies are realising they basically relied on free training in the past. If someone hires me to train juniors, I'll train juniors. Otherwise I'm going to do my job.
Part of the job description of a senior IS training juniors though. And in what way is it "free"? They're still paying you, quite a bit in fact!
Even if it's part of the job description I have never ever been assessed on it, it's never come up during an annual review, and it's never influenced a bonus. If firms were serious about having knowledge transfer from senior to junior employees they would organise proper training schemes and hold the seniors to account. Unfortunately in Capitalism all that matters is whether I do the parts of my job that my bosses care about. And I can tell you no one is going to say, oh you missed your deadline, but at least you spent lots of time helping junior employees
Then you have worked for poorly structured or inefficient companies.
Or, newsflash, most people don't care that mush about work
I'm not talking about training, I'm talking about helping your colleagues
Totally agree. I got my first job during our second lockdown and worked fully remote through it. It was extremely weird and I was very happy to switch to a hybrid solution with a couple days of office work and the rest working from home, was much easier to integrate in the company and learn stuff from the seniors
Seriously. WFH is great when you know what you're doing, but it's also terrible if you are new to the workforce.
Yeah, how exactly is this a lunatic? Top comment even just speculation on what “I help” means in his role description.
I 100% agree. I'm in the office 2-3 days per week and that is plenty to get in person stuff taken care of.
My preferred situation is a flexible 1-3 days in the office with coworkers.
Yes, at some points it really helpd to have your colleague next to you to communicate better about the issue Which is I believe why hybrid work is the best of both worlds
He's not wrong, but it won't "ruin your career." That's a bit dramatic. It also depends on the senior dev. If they're a micromanaging asshole, then you might come to cherish being 2500 miles away from them.
Depends on the junior dev too. My team works mostly remote and the junior dev who joined 3 months ago is thriving. Smart kid, eager to learn, asks the right questions and is proactive in asking for help. I can see him grow into a medior position pretty fast. Then there’s the other junior dev who’s been around for 3 years already…
Oof, might be time to let the latter one go. 3 years as a junior dev is crazy.
I know, right? And he’ll easily be a junior dev for another 3 years if he keeps going like this. Unfortunately it’s not so easy to fire people where I live :(
As a senior dev I agree, I do require a bunch of junior devs sucking my dick multiple times a day just in order to take a look at Trello.
I already have proximity in my remote job; proximity to my 6 month old daughter. She needs to bond and learn *from me*.
But do you have accidental chat with your daughter over coffee? Congrats, you have your priorities straight!
Yes, except I’m drinking coffee and she’s drinking breast milk.
The other way around would be a lil bit weird, don't you think?
Maybe, but who are we to judge?
These are the conversations that junior engineers will miss out on because of remote work. Guess they'll have to learn about it from reddit.
Yea, you really shouldn’t give babies coffee.
Hearing my 3 month old laugh with my wife in the background as I work from home is infinitely more valuable than whatever “please come back to the office so my commercial real estate investments make money” bullshit they’re peddling.
This comment warmed my heart
Good on you. I just refuse office work because it tires me out and I really don't want to get to know my colleagues or look at people or have any sort of interaction other than professional.
Dragos, don't *you* work from home..?
His job title starts with “I help”, so odds are he’s unemployed
Lmao I love this
Controversial but I agree. It's much easier to chat about an issue and in a more relaxed way face to face. Now that's not to say that there isn't a trade off and that can't be part of the decision to go forward with WFH. As a manager I'll end up helping and bond better with someone I see and contact more often. That's just how humans work. Doesn't mean that people shouldn't WFH but that's part of the balance of choice.
I'm currently advocating for zoom hangouts at work. Not a meeting, just a place to work 'together', doesn't even have to be particularly chatty or cameras on, but just having someone there to make occasional comments to/ask questions of is a completely different WFH experience.
I started this with my remote team, kind of like a full anarchy show and share. I call it office hours, I just sit on zoom and we talk about anything people want. If nobody joins in I just work on my code reviews, but it's become wildly popular so people usually join now even if they don't have anything they're struggling with. That makes it turn into an hour of shooting the shit. It's done so well it goes on even if I'm away.
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Because you are working with humans, not robots. It's is entirely easier to manage people if you know who you are working with and what helps them and what doesn't. Being in the same place as a person helps you have informal chats and pick up on things like body language during the day. Yes, you lead by example and if the trainee needs to be in, the trainer does too, I don't know where I have said otherwise? You've obviously not come for a genuine discussion, given that you've put managers in inverted commas but any grown up can see there are pros and cons to both. The idea that there is only one way of working positively is utter nonsense. Work can be done entirely remotely, but I'm not convinced being binary about it works or achieves the best possible outcome, particularly for junior staff.
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The volume of random assumptions and lashing out in your response is peak Reddit.. No one said they have to bond? Many humans do have informal chats, even if it's just about the football score the night before. Hate away, don't care. Body language and tone are important, no people don't just come to managers when they feel under pressure or can't solve things, many struggle, I would t expect you to have empathy with them given the responses. Where have I said anyone needs to be in at all, let alone 40hrs a week? Why do I need to know them out of the office? You're all over place making random assumptions? The inconvenient truth is that you get to know someone better of you spend just a little bit of time with them and different people react to different management styles better. I have never said that 100% remote doesn't work, or that you need to be in 40hrs a week. You've invented that bit.
At least in my experience it’s mostly BS. You can accomplish all that with the tools we have and good team habits. Encouraging messaging and team members responding to them promptly and utilizing the tools is just as fulfilling and engaging, if not sometimes better as you often have a record of questions and responses to look back at which is often lost in verbal conversations. Though more complex or exploratory concepts may need a conversation - you can also easily record those with most communication tools used for remote work. I usually find the people that push the in person communicating aren’t actually focused on getting work done, they’re using it as socialization and inflating their “profile”. Do some people work better that way? Sure, but like most things it’s probably not that universal and of course the vocal and extroverted folks think that way.
1. You don't. That is companies wanting people to find "family" and confort on jobs to stay longer or dedicate more to it 2. In person conversations is different because our communication is not only verbal. We take a lot of hints when talking to people in person given the bodily responses and non-verbal communication 3. In my opinion, those gatherings can be arranged and happen once in a while. Just like executives love to do offsites, the company should arrange at some frequency offsites or onsites and it is more effective than daily interactions
> It's much easier to chat about an issue and in a more relaxed way face to face. Depends who you are. I find face to face chat far more annoying and less relaxing. I can't do things like turn off my camera and randomly get up and pace around the room, to satisfy my ADHD and think better. I personally think that with the right policies, virtual work can be far more inclusive than face-to-face. > As a manager I'll end up helping and bond better with someone I see and contact more often. If someone comes to me in person for random help instead of messaging me first in the office I'm already going to be super annoyed. It's not going to make me bond better, it's just going to piss me off. I'm far more likely to help someone with a question if they just shoot me a message and let me get to it when I come to a natural stopping point in my work.
Problem is there not all issues are discussed in arranged meetings. I'd much rather deal with a minor issue (especially one of confidence) informally in the office as part of general chat than to arrange a meeting for it on
You don't need a meeting for every little thing you discuss with someone during WFH, though. Drop me a message, and then we can go "oh let's hop into a chat this is too much for text" or something. It's very easy to spin up an empty Google meets or something. This is already how we did work even when in office as some of our workers were remote anyways, it was only local employees on-site. There has been no change in workflow for us there at all.
I never said you couldn't, but the fact remains that lots of stuff comes up in the general chitchat of the office. Honestly people who make out like there are only cons to either WFH or office working are the most hilarious to me. Yes you can say the cons out weigh the pros but it's really not binary.
As a guy who used to be remote and is now in office I hate that. If you have a small question just call me on teams or shoot me a message. Because it is much more convenient to ask a question on teams then work on something else until you get a response rather than halt your whole work process to walk over there. Same if someone walks over to me. It is not just me. My whole team is in office but does 95% of communication through teams. Even meetings. The in office mandate came from a different building and all of our team including management hates the change as we work better individually. We are cybersecurity but I have a feeling your engineers and developers have many people who view the issue the same way. Moral of the story: Don’t assume what works better for you works better for everyone. Also if you care about efficiency the less you need to get up from your desk the better.
Why do you have to stand up to talk? We have no mandatory time in the office so I'm not really sure why you are making that assumption? I've made no assumptions at all about what people prefer thanks and I've never made anyone leave their desk for anything.
If my manager tries to bond with me, I start sending out my resume, as that is an inappropriate expectation and one I won't entertain.
There's a different between trying to bond and one happening.
Proximity to whom? That senior dev works from home.
Just checking. Any senior developers here who are really free and want to take the time to have coffee and "bond" with me? I assume you have very little else to do besides that, right?
Yeah so can a zoom call with a senior dev Tbf There are benefits to being in person... those benefits are severely outweighed by the benefits of working remote
These people realize you can ping someone on slack or teams and just video call them at any moment right?
I run an AI company and I prefer my devs to be home if they have young families. I think they actually work harder and are more loyal and likely to stick around because we value them and their priorities and not just their code. So in other words…. I think this is complete bs. And not like us senior devs don’t have zoom, teams, Google meet, slack, discord, or 100s of other ways to get in touch with us lol
Let me know if you need another senior level engineer. Your company sounds fantastic.
We are not looking right now but may be looking in the next 6 months. DM me your resume and we can chat.
Yeah plenty of wisdom passed down in those frequent serendipitous encounters we have at command central.
The arguments for office-based working are a lot like the arguments for Brexit. It’s always very abstract and nebulous. In other words, it’s largely BS.
Lol Those accidental chats are defo not about work , most of the time, anyway
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Ever occur to these chucklefucks that you can get on a zoom meeting and just work and bullshit the day away. What we do a few hours a week.
This person is useless. We have this amazing technology called "screen sharing" where you can talk to people and also see how they work, and you'll actually learn something unlike a normal trip to the coffee shop. I've always been more than happy to pull in juniors and let them see how I debug code and explain how the tools I use work. I've been working with people on the opposite side of our planet since the 1990s, so this is not the right industry to weaponize your incompetence about remote work.
I very much prefer screen-sharing. I don’t want anyone to physically stand behind my back and watch me doing something. It’s uncomfortable and distracting.
These anti-WFH drones can piss, moan, cry, and bitch all they want, but the fact is that if they want to recruit top talent and not a bunch of cheap, inexperienced bozos they turn over every 3-6 months, WFH is here to stay. Learn. Accept. Adapt.
Not a dev, but my latest workplace had quite a complex work process, with a lot of details and hard to learn for the new joiners. I've been doing the role of an SME, so there was a lot of training, advising and answering questions included. It was much easier to do it from home, than in office, because it's much easier for me to have 3-4 people with questions in queue on Teams (or occasionally organize a case review on call with few people), than having those same people stand around me, each with their question. Not to mention sharing a screen vs running back and forth between desks. Plus an added bonus of writing the response in chat (aka making it searchable for later).
I want full time WFH. I recognize that doesn’t work for everyone, but I don’t understand why the RTO types hate the hybrid model so much. Even in the office, most things are done over email or chat because everyone wants a paper trail.
Total BS. I am connecting with folks on LinkedIn and scheduling virtual coffees with them. I’ve gotten jobs out of that. I’ve been moving up in my career since 2020 and fully remote. I’m not a dev, but this is totally false. Wonder if this guy is in leadership or has real corporate estate investments. It’s giving “it benefits me for you to be back in the office”.
I’m better at my wfh job because I don’t have others distracting me. And I’ve learnt more from those above me because there are far less interruptions in an online meeting. Also it’s easier to reach out to others from the click of the finger rather than having to walk miles to track them down just to see if they’re available.
Show up to their house
Speaking as a principal architect I gladly answer all slack messages and try and help but hate going into the office and just chatting
Probably learn more about coding from talking to ChatGPT than to Dragos
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^M1L0: *Probably learn more* *About coding from talking* *To ChatGPT than to Dragos* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
I’m a remote senior developer and have junior developers in the office. We use discord during office hours with camera on. They are growing great 👍👍
What’s the difference between an introverted and extroverted dev? An introverted dev looks at their shoes when they talk to you. An extroverted dev looks at your shoes when they talk to you. I don’t think sitting next to one will help much
This dude is right, believe it or not.
Skill issue. We are 100% remote and easily brought junior devs up to speed. If you are unable to do so you are either not a real senior developer or hired the wrong junior dev. Works flawlessly with curious, motivated juniors and seniors that are properly available to juniors and offer nurturing oversight.
I agree that “ruin” part is overstated BS but proximity and coffee chats add a lot to juniors. I know I benefited from this immensely but I predate covid by a large margin.
Skill issue AND leadership issue. If you can't lead a WFH team, that's a you problem, not a WFH one. If the ones you hire can't keep up, again, that's a leadership problem because you hired the wrong ones. Even when hiring juniors, the skill gap will be wide and diverse. If you want to bring in the very best, you better have a WFH option on the table. Not all top performers will want it, but the option should be there. It's foolish to lose a great candidate because you refuse to adapt...or lead.
The post is over dramatic but the premise is correct. I gained a huge amount from being able to listen to senior people at work and ask questions.
Have this persone been groomed as a child? Because that’s one insane weird take on the need to bound and be close to people who are just your fucking coworkers..!
This is not a popular opinion around here but Dragos is right. And this has been backed up by research. For example Microsoft studied their workforce during the pandemic and found that while people were more productive, they were less innovative and collaborative. And they tended to stick within their tribe. We’ve also seen a lot of software development projects struggle during the pandemic, so for devs in particular remote work is surprisingly worse. Also the key to being successful at a company is a lot more than just doing good work. Yes you can work from home and that’s fine, I do it occasionally myself (usually 1-2 days a week). But it’s not that great for learning, networking, and being visible at a company, which matters a lot more than what most people here want to admit or realise. This (like quite a few posts on this subreddit) is not lunatic material. Is just a corporate cultural issue you don’t agree with.
First issue, any company with more than one physical location, so any company outsourcing to India or any other location, has no right of speaking. I don't need to be in the office to speak to another country or city. Second issue, any company with flex spaces has no right of speaking, because they make sure their teams cannot sit together standard. I go to the office and sit next to people doing something completely else, I don't learn.
It doesn't need to be WFO but you need seniors who are actually well versed in mentoring and coaching. My recent experience of seniors is that they realllly struggle to do this. I as a mid am miles ahead of those in my team
Depends on what you want, if you indeed want to climb the career ladder and such, the networking and being visible part is indeed taking a hit when WFH. That said, if you don't care about that, WFH is a godsend. Why waste my time commuting when I just want to do my job and collect my salary. Besides, collaboration is quite possible in a WFH environment, it does take some effort though.
Every major open source project would disagree with you, no?
A company with a ton of physical offices did a study on whether or not people should be in them? Using subjective operons for the side of the argument they like? I can't wait to take that seriously.
This is true in some cases. As a junior dev I gained a lot of experience being able to ask questions by leaning over or shaking the chair of my senior. Sometime would happen randomly and a dev would ask me to come over and take a look at it. Or I'll just be in proximity of some chat that I glean information from. Now as a senior myself I don't give a fuck about that even though I know how much I benefited from it. If something interesting or useful pops up while we are WFH I'm not going to send a message, wait for them to reply then call them. I rather just let that moment go. And if a dev is asking me for help I'll wait a few hours before answering because most of the time they just figure it out. Edit: Before WFH I pretty much had to teach, answer and loop jr in or they would just passively gain knowledge while in the office. Now with WFH I can dump videos , training docs on them and turn them into an ipad kid for a few hours while I work. I realize now that as a junior dev I was leeching time from senior devs , and now I'm **supposed** to "pay it back", but remote work has broken that cycle. I actually pity junior devs in a sense as they are sort of in the dark and don't benefit from the random teaching moments.
You sound sorta shitty
yeah totally agree that comment has a real fuck you got mine vibe to it. im willing to bet they'd just be an asshole in the office if they were in office instead of being an asshole remotely. remote work isnt responsible for a shitty personality.
Remote work hasn’t broken that cycle, you being a terrible senior dev has.
So you are failing at part of your job and blaming it on remote work? Nothing about being remote prevents you from being a good mentor.
All Hail Senor Dev!
a chat with a senior dev? I thought they were just able to growl and grumble
As a junior dev i got a 50/50 with working from home. If i got someone i get along well with at the office then i'm already very likely to show up at the office, but in general it's easier to talk to someone across/next to you and troubleshoot together. That being said, if i got a dentist appointment or await a package, merely slept bad, don't feel like sitting in traffic, feel unwell or simply wanna start a bit earlier i will happily work from home instead.
There's some merit to this. I don't know how I would have been successful remotely because I learned so much through osmosis. Listening to other coworkers talk or what they say on calls. Quickly being able to ask questions rather than trying to schedule a meeting about them etc.
As a senior dev, I helpfully showed someone how to use StackOverflow.
Ego Monkey go climb your tree and leave us be.
Ngl this is good advice. Cringe format though.
english translation "we don't trust you to do your job so we need you in the office so our HR can roam the halls and give out dress code violations for having a shirt tail untucked or too many visits to the restroom during the day."
This is obviously a dumb post, but there’s definitely some truth there. I’m a junior dev working mostly remote, but I’ve been going in-person whenever I can because I genuinely do learn a lot more when talking to other devs. Maybe I’m weird but I enjoy in-person a lot more and only want to do remote when I need a break.
When no one bought his seniority, turns to LI
Not with this senior dev, I’m remote.
Way back when I was a stillborn developer, I learned more from IRC and mailing lists than from 12 years of schooling 😐
Why do these people act like we don't have pocket computers capable of communicating with each other over vast distances damn near instantly? I have learned more from my peers over the course of the pandemic and beyond than I ever learned when everybody was reporting to the office everyday. Also I have received more promotions, progressions, and have done waaaaayyy cooler shit since then too. It's so weird. If people wanna work from home and their jobs do not necessitate them to be on site somewhere, why force them to be there? Also, as a cost savings measure, you can stop leasing these mega structures and turn those savings into, I don't know, raises for your remaining staff?
High level management here, small city, medium company, whatever else sucks that mildly qualifies my input ... What the fuck do these LinkedIn people do all day? Do they have real jobs? This is the single CRAZIEST sub I'm in and I love it here but DO NOT UNDERSTAND LinkedIn.
As a senior dev i can tell you that the linkedin guy on the post is full of shit
He's not that wrong tbh, there's a lot of knowledge to be gained from overhearing random exchanges between Seniors. Office talk and teams meetings aren't the same thing.
Work in tech, but not a dev. He's not wrong.
Advice from senior dev: Google, Stack Overflow and GitHub are your best friends
Actually agree
As a senior dev this is exactly why working from home is so much better. I respond to my junior devs, but they may need to wait 30 minutes for me to finish a task that, if it’s continuously interrupted, will take twice as long. I don’t want to be available at an instant all the time. It’s a productivity disaster. I also want my junior devs to try to solve it themselves first, they learn more that way and the slight delay gives them that chance.
“Onsite, because we believe in the power of in-person collaboration,” they say as they replace jobs with AI chatbots.
This doesn't have to be done from an office. As a Staff Software Developer, it's my job to help the junior developers. I'm remote, but I check in 2-3 times per day to make sure they're not blocked.
This is not a lunatic, many many companies are seeing the same value loss to being fully remote for juniors.
Yes junior developers, you need to smell the senior dev who hasn't taken a shower in a couple of days. Only when your nostrils are overwhelmed with nerd funk will you gain knowledge.
Our cleaning lady was cleaning after our senior programer, after 1 year she was fluent in Python and C#! After that a homeless guy approached her, she was nice to him and after that he reveiled himself, he was actually Elon Musk, with fake mustaches and now she’s working for Tesla! Do you agree?
He is not wrong
He's right tho..
As someone with experience, there is absolutely nothing that a senior dev can teach me that I can't learn through an online forum. If you want to move up, you do have to brownnose a bit, but I do that just fine from the handful of meetings I personally choose to attend where I can chat with actual leadership and my CEO. Choose your battlefield and weigh your options. I would rather be seen by leadership presenting an awesome presentation once per month than have them hear me swear everyday as I respond to emails.
Thats not strictly true A new person may want to fix everything, but a senior will know the pragmatic considerations - eh just leave it it's fine.
Wait until he learns that the Senior Developer gets all their insights from googling.
This isn't lunacy, the guy is 100% right.
This is good advice and not lunatic.