Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah, I definitely think it’s a senior vs junior thing. Experienced folk already know the ropes and keep their head down without interruptions from underlings or junior developers. Junior developers have a harder time with acquiring tacit knowledge and need more handholding, which they don’t get because the experienced folk have their head down.

I’ve had a couple interns lately, and the WFH experience with them has been much less successful than past in-person internships have been. They’re able to basically moonlight on a remote project, and there has been actually MORE handholding required as it’s much harder to judge when they’re struggling or if they have things under control. There are a lot more non-work distractions for them and they have developed less camaraderie between each other as lunch times, social activities, and fortuitous interactions have been rarer. The lack of established trust also has significant overhead.

So I agree that this is in many ways a senior vs junior and a maturity divide, however these are digital-native students and they’re still struggling, so I’m not sure I agree it’s going to get much better. I think some of the WFH productivity gains are coasting on pre-pandemic trust and implicit knowledge transfer that aren’t happening as much any more. You can see how hard it is for young people in particular by seeing the drops in performance due to school-at-home.

(However, WFH is indeed forcing some familiarity with remote work for many institutions that resisted technology and teleworking arrangements, so there definitely has been some improvement in some areas. It has been a godsend for some people, and that will be a lasting benefit of 2020’s forced WFH experiment.)

I think some of it is a "senior vs junior and a maturity divide" as you said, but some of WFH effectiveness has to do with experience in the current role/project. I've got something like 18 years of software experience, have often been the senior guy who doesn't require handholding, etc. But I got a new job during the pandemic, and joining a team with a complex system and various environments and deployment methods, etc, takes some time to come up to speed on. I definitely felt that I picked that stuff up more slowly from Confluence pages and Slack conversations than from previous transitions where you can sit next to a co-worker and effortlessly watch what they're doing, talk about what they're doing, shout over to the person in the next cube with a question, etc. Not saying WFH doesn't or can't work, but I do think that people who are already up to speed do well WFH and people who are still coming up to speed are at a bit of a disadvantage.

Bootstrapping is definitely a process that's much easier when you have instant, low-friction access to the people with the knowledge.

Often you don't even know what questions you need to ask, and the give-and-take of a 1:1 face to face meeting provokes all sorts of useful tangents.

I interned remotely last summer and it was a disaster. I had very little direction, couldn't stay focused on work, didn't meet anyone, and really learned very little. Not looking forward to doing it again this summer.

Yep.

MOST technology knowledge involves a good deal of tacit knowledge which an only be transmitted person-to-person in an intern/mentor/supervisor mode.

So simpler tasks that have zero barriers-to-entry for automation can be done without this. But for more complex stuff, not so much. This is the same for B2B sales - that will ALWAYS be person-to-person - it simply can't work via e-commerce like selling books or CDs on Amazon.

Yeah, I used "handholding," but that's really an unnecessarily pejorative term for providing direction and knowledge transfer to less-senior employees. I.e. senior employees and managers actually doing their frakking jobs.

What advice would you give to an intern's mentor to improve the remote internship experience?

I was a 2x WFH intern. Micromanage the intern a bit more. Ask to see code that’s being worked on and don’t let them go too long without interaction. It’s way too easy to get distracted when the only interaction we have is a 15 minute stand up in the morning, a few slack messages, and 8 hours of time to manage ourselves. There were a lot of days where I could get done more work in the hour before a 1:1 meeting than the rest of the day. When I’m not learning much and the feedback is still positive even when I slack off then it’s really hard to stay motivated.

Also remember that interns don’t have a home office and most are in their bedroom at the same desk they relax and play games at. It doesn’t feel like I’m actually at work unless there’s frequent interaction

One nice way to "micromanage" and also just learn how senior devs work is to pair program. I feel like it's been a boon for me, as a junior dev myself.

I second what DC1350 said. I didn't get enough opportunities to face criticism, have my code reviewed, or to get steered in the right direction, and that led to the same exact situation where I would piss away weekdays and scramble to put something together before my weekly 1:1.

Of course, if I were a better intern, I would have taken care of a lot of those things myself, but I think it's better practice as a mentor to start with the metaphorical bowling bumpers up and then relax the oversight as the intern proves themselves capable over the 3 months.

Doing it again this summer, I plan to ask for at least 3x weekly 1:1s (e.g. MWF) and to make sure I have code reviewed in the first week or two of the internship. More interaction with other interns would also help, especially technical interaction and not just high-level discussions of our projects. I also think it would be cool to do some sort of pair programming / spectating where I watch the mentor work through a problem to get a sense of what the professional workflow actually looks like.

let interns meet or communicate and share onboarding experience with each ither. so kne senior dev can "hold hand" of a single intern, so to speak, and that intern will hold hands of other interns

>Yeah, I definitely think it’s a senior vs junior thing.

Also, an existing vs new employee thing (which is not the same). I'm doing fine with WFH because of the relationships I have built here over the last 5 years and my knowledge of the company culture/organization/processes. If I were a new employee (even coming in as a senior level experienced hire) I would not have any of that and it would be far harder to get established. Usually by the 5 year mark I'm looking to hop, but I've been holding off for exactly that reason.

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