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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

> COVID has generally proven to both employers and employees that productivity doesn't drop that much.

I know this is the popular sentiment pushed by remote work fans, but in offline contexts I hear the polar opposite: Productivity struggles are ubiquitous during COVID WFH.

Even the most pro-remote people are quick to admit that COVID WFH is not like normal WFH. Some places even had school closures which meant parents were juggling kids schooling and their jobs. Maybe you worked in a company that didn’t have a lot of employees with these problems, but it has been a significant challenge for many people and companies in the past year and a half.

I managed remote teams long before COVID and even I wouldn’t ever suggest that remote has no effect on productivity. Remote is hard and I’d even say that most people aren’t cut out for it, at least not without significant mentoring and additional management attention.

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I completely agree with this.

Certain phases of work and types of teams do alright remotely - typically a team with a lot of senior engineers in mid-project flow with few external dependencies. But a team with a significant number of juniors, faced with multiple blockers or external dependencies will underperform badly compared to in-person working.

Whole days will go missing because of a lack of effective communication - the simple ability to lean over and check or ask how someone is doing. Not to mention the inability of learners to just pick up information through incidental conversation and overhearing other people talking.

> Whole days will go missing because of a lack of effective communication

A friend in the construction industry has been dealing with this since COVID WFH started. He works with a lot of different architects, designers, suppliers, and so on that have to coordinate work. He also has to track the costs of mistakes and extra time lost due to drawing issues, errors, missed change orders and so on.

As soon as COVID WFH started, the rate of errors spiked upward. It didn’t decline until companies brought their employees back into the office. He now goes out of his way to work with companies that have gone back to in-office work because it’s the simplest and most predictable way to reduce the amount of money he loses to simple errors.

Sounds ripe for disruption for a coordination app of some sort to track different progress of things…

Not all problems can be solved by technology. Not all “problems” are actually problems either.

"But a team with a significant number of juniors, faced with multiple blockers or external dependencies will underperform badly compared to in-person working."

So, like every corporation.

That really falls on management and having the right docs and communications written ready before the juniors need it.

All the good docs I have seen were written by an engineer who captured their own knowledge for themselves or others. I have been at several corporations where I was able to onboard myself or resolve specific issues by searching confluence or whatever wiki was available. Totally different teams/divisions/departments.

Juniors need seniors more than they need docs.

This doesn’t seem like it’s a matter of being WFH as much as not using chat tools effectively.

It’s very possible to just shoot the juniors a DM asking how they’re doing. or having an active team channel where people can ask for help or offer direction.

Not everybody’s brain is wired to monitor chat tools, streams of jira tickets, and piles of email. Many are much more effective when they can just roll their chair over to their colleagues desk and work something out.

Isn't the same as being sat next to them and being able to lean over or just ask though is it? You can keep your code on your own screen and just nod in.

The screen context switching is a killer.

leaning over is just as much a context switch. “just being asked” something is often a rude interruption of concentration.

over chat i have the opportunity to take a minute to wrap up what i’m doing. I also walk away with a written record, so if ive asked for help, i have reference to go back to. which can then serve as a starting point for documentation. or others in the chat can read and passively absorb information. or contribute to the conversation.

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