Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasondclinton | Hacker News Reader

As a manager of a new team, I'm a little scared about being available to help my new-hires acclimate to the tech stack and culture without proximity.

We're getting ahead of additional Coronavirus impacts now, though, by establishing team chat channel and expectations for virtual presence and having discussions about how to maintain software engineering productivity on a remote laptop. Next thing on my list is to establish team culture of it being okay to quickly jump on a VC for high bandwidth information exchange and leaning-over-the-shoulder type stuff.

I see a lot more written communication in the future, too.

View on HN

Group transparency and face to face pair time is critical. Your new hires need to be able to feel comfortable asking stupid questions in Slack channels full of smart people.

I've heard this referred to as "situational awareness" and "psychological safety". The former being aware of what your team is up to (and everyone being in that state); the later feeling like you ask a question without someone judging you or the team just generally treating you as a whole person.

This is very important. I hang out in programming communities focused on helping others and way too often I see people asking perfectly valid questions filled with apologies and guilt over not knowing something. It's a bit sad honestly, but it's nice seeing them open up after you help tem figure it out without judgment.

Hah - that's a really good way of putting it. I'm gonna write this down somewhere in case I'm ever interviewing for an eng manager role :)

I think the fact that you're thinking about it a lot and setting such precedents will probably pay off in the long run for your team's communication and documentation - past the duration of this latest scare.

I too am scared of trying to onboard a new-hire (especially a junior) in a completely remote fashion. Part of this is because we are not set up nor do we have the proper support; but this seems a little chicken v. egg. The other is how to create those opportunities for social & professional serendipity you get when colocated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com