Coaching newbies doesn’t work that well remotely, so you’ll have to be at the office more for them to ask you questions, otherwise they’re stuck in the simplest things for days.
That’s the line my CEO used, but we had plenty of hires join during COVID that have excelled while here, with lots of talented engineers that had to leave because they were forced to an office hundreds of miles away.
Personal experience. The juniors just out of school and interns are invariably stuck in something trivial that can often be solved with looking at their stuff for a few seconds. They don’t dare to disturb you with any questions and need a lot of explaining. Doing all the explaining through the screen is a pain and you have to hound them with calls to get them to ask questions.
Experienced new hires don’t have that issue. They can Google stuff, read a manual and know when to send a message for a blocking issue.
That’s doesn’t mean send everybody to the office. Just the new guy and the coach should be enough in most cases and reduce the presence as they hit their stride.
The juniors just out of school and interns are invariably stuck in something trivial that can often be solved with looking at their stuff for a few seconds.
If only there were a way to share your screen remotely…
Yeah sorry but that’s not the same. Efficient teaching is very highly dependent on nonverbal cues to properly align yourself to the person you’re teaching to. On top of that screen sharing software is clunky and necessarily has latency, which makes interrupting much more disruptive which is most detrimental when there needs to be a bidirectional high-throughput stream of information.
Efficient teaching is very highly dependent on nonverbal cues to properly align yourself to the person you’re teaching to.
I would say that is highly dependent on the type of learner you are.
My daughter is in online school right now. Her teachers usually can’t see her because most of them don’t require her to have her camera on. She often can’t see them because she’s doing screen sharing. She’s getting better grades than she’s ever had before.
On top of that screen sharing software is clunky and necessarily has latency
I don’t know when the last time you used it was, but this is just not true anymore. It’s as easy as clicking ‘share screen’ in Zoom or Google Meet and the latency is so low that it’s essentially not noticeable.
I work 80 % remotely, I know what I’m talking about. MS Teams is by far the worst latency-wise, but even on the best software you can’t get over the fact that there will be a 200-300 ms jitter buffer.
Ever had the “yeah I- so we - OK go ahea- sorry -”? That’s what I’m talking about.
Good on your daughter if she learns well remotely, but literally everyone I’ve talked to who was in education during COVID had an awful experience. Although I suppose in the school system it doesn’t matter as much since with 20-600 students per teacher there’s not much back-and-forth going on anyway.
Remote work is great for focusing, it’s great for async workflows (slack/discord/email/jira), it’s great for solo work, but it’s just plain inferior for certain highly collaborative workflows like 1-on-1 teaching. There’s enough good reasons to work remotely that we don’t have to lie about the rest.
Ever had the “yeah I- so we - OK go ahea- sorry -”? That’s what I’m talking about.
You mean the exact same thing that has happened with telephones since the 19th century?
I don’t know how old you are, but I am guessing anyone here over 40 can tell you about how the training they were given was “read this book and get started” more than once.
Right, and last I checked people weren’t remote working too much before the 21st century.
If your job doesn’t want to train you properly that’s on them, but assuming all parties involved are acting in good faith I will always go to the office to train a junior employee.
I thought this until I’ve actually done it a few times, and been that newbie at a remote first employer.
The difference in being on boarded at a company which embraces remote vs one that is still hedging, is massive.
It can be done well.
Yes the extroverts might get fidgety, but they can schedule a meeting or body doubling session or something. We introverts have had to adjust to office work for the last century; let’s see y’all do a bit of that labour for another, better way to do info work now :p
When the company where I was managing a small team went full remote during COVID, I had 0 issues with my existing staff, but when I had to hire, that was definitely less than ideal for onboarding. We still made it work but it was nothing like the in-office onboardings from before. There are solutions though, you can do virtual sit-togethers, and if you’re reactive to slack/etc you can be even more present for them than in-person, but it felt uneasy for sure the first times. Left all corporate behind now and running a one man business so don’t need to care about this.
I think that might depend on who you’re hiring though. That’s the same line our boss told me when they pushed me back to the office. But in the time since then, we have hired several new staff who actually prefer to communicate digitally. They will email, teams, phone, or text me with questions before actually seeking me out in person.
Coaching newbies doesn’t work that well remotely, so you’ll have to be at the office more for them to ask you questions, otherwise they’re stuck in the simplest things for days.
This is evidence that you need to adjust your training methods.
Any evidence to back that up?
That’s the line my CEO used, but we had plenty of hires join during COVID that have excelled while here, with lots of talented engineers that had to leave because they were forced to an office hundreds of miles away.
Personal experience. The juniors just out of school and interns are invariably stuck in something trivial that can often be solved with looking at their stuff for a few seconds. They don’t dare to disturb you with any questions and need a lot of explaining. Doing all the explaining through the screen is a pain and you have to hound them with calls to get them to ask questions.
Experienced new hires don’t have that issue. They can Google stuff, read a manual and know when to send a message for a blocking issue.
That’s doesn’t mean send everybody to the office. Just the new guy and the coach should be enough in most cases and reduce the presence as they hit their stride.
If only there were a way to share your screen remotely…
Yeah sorry but that’s not the same. Efficient teaching is very highly dependent on nonverbal cues to properly align yourself to the person you’re teaching to. On top of that screen sharing software is clunky and necessarily has latency, which makes interrupting much more disruptive which is most detrimental when there needs to be a bidirectional high-throughput stream of information.
I would say that is highly dependent on the type of learner you are.
My daughter is in online school right now. Her teachers usually can’t see her because most of them don’t require her to have her camera on. She often can’t see them because she’s doing screen sharing. She’s getting better grades than she’s ever had before.
I don’t know when the last time you used it was, but this is just not true anymore. It’s as easy as clicking ‘share screen’ in Zoom or Google Meet and the latency is so low that it’s essentially not noticeable.
I work 80 % remotely, I know what I’m talking about. MS Teams is by far the worst latency-wise, but even on the best software you can’t get over the fact that there will be a 200-300 ms jitter buffer.
Ever had the “yeah I- so we - OK go ahea- sorry -”? That’s what I’m talking about.
Good on your daughter if she learns well remotely, but literally everyone I’ve talked to who was in education during COVID had an awful experience. Although I suppose in the school system it doesn’t matter as much since with 20-600 students per teacher there’s not much back-and-forth going on anyway.
Remote work is great for focusing, it’s great for async workflows (slack/discord/email/jira), it’s great for solo work, but it’s just plain inferior for certain highly collaborative workflows like 1-on-1 teaching. There’s enough good reasons to work remotely that we don’t have to lie about the rest.
You mean the exact same thing that has happened with telephones since the 19th century?
I don’t know how old you are, but I am guessing anyone here over 40 can tell you about how the training they were given was “read this book and get started” more than once.
Right, and last I checked people weren’t remote working too much before the 21st century.
If your job doesn’t want to train you properly that’s on them, but assuming all parties involved are acting in good faith I will always go to the office to train a junior employee.
And that’s why you do stand-ups every day, which everybody loves to hate.
I thought this until I’ve actually done it a few times, and been that newbie at a remote first employer.
The difference in being on boarded at a company which embraces remote vs one that is still hedging, is massive.
It can be done well.
Yes the extroverts might get fidgety, but they can schedule a meeting or body doubling session or something. We introverts have had to adjust to office work for the last century; let’s see y’all do a bit of that labour for another, better way to do info work now :p
When the company where I was managing a small team went full remote during COVID, I had 0 issues with my existing staff, but when I had to hire, that was definitely less than ideal for onboarding. We still made it work but it was nothing like the in-office onboardings from before. There are solutions though, you can do virtual sit-togethers, and if you’re reactive to slack/etc you can be even more present for them than in-person, but it felt uneasy for sure the first times. Left all corporate behind now and running a one man business so don’t need to care about this.
I think that might depend on who you’re hiring though. That’s the same line our boss told me when they pushed me back to the office. But in the time since then, we have hired several new staff who actually prefer to communicate digitally. They will email, teams, phone, or text me with questions before actually seeking me out in person.