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Comment by nmridul | Hacker News Reader

In my project (30+ members) we have team members located in multiple locations (6+ cities in 4 countries). And for the last 2+ years I am the only one working from my country. While our company is 500+ strong in this country, for this particular project I am the only one.

So interactions with the project team is fully remote.

I am sure even pre-covid many MNCs might have a similar structure with members spread across different location. Though coming to office, but project work happens remotely. Also have juniors joining the team.

It might be difficult for juniors to get started. But not impossible to handle.

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> Its difficult - yes. But not impossible to handle.

The problem with “difficult but not impossible” is that it requires special personality types to handle it.

Some people can do it, but now you have a secondary problem in that you need to find a way to filter those people in the hiring pipeline. You also have a risk of hiring people who can’t handle it and having to cut them and re-hire.

This is why most “difficult but not impossible” conditions are reserved for special exceptions but aren’t useful for general policies.

Isn't the same thing true about working in an office? Certain personality types thrive while others suffer.

> it requires special personality types to handle it.

I agree, and I don't see a problem with it.

> [...], but aren’t useful for general policies.

offices are just optimizing for the loudest and more social people, this is a consequence of managers tending to be like that, I don't think that approach is useful for general policies neither.

I disagree its difficult. When the culture supports mentorship, onboarding and first year experience as high priority items with solid guidelines / process around them, its pretty easy.

but wait, that means changing cultural and such, that's not easy is the response I often get to this, to which I say preemptively:

That I would agree with, because the US business cultural is surprisingly stiff to changing things that would have favorable impact to workers, but that is IMO a different and separate discussion to the fact that this is a readily solvable problem.

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