Remote or In-Office work has different benefits and drawbacks depending on individual situations
What is good for some may drive companies to do what is bad for others.
I have heard a rumor.
I want to clearly label it as "something someone told me" and not fact, but it rings true to me.
The rumor is that new college graduate SDEs joining Amazon are not doing as well as they have in the past in their first-year reviews.
Amazon hires thousands of SDEs and has decades of data on the distribution of their ratings, so it seems reasonable that Amazon could know this.
Whether or not the data shows what I have heard is the rumor.
For now, let's explore why it might be true and why in-office work might help this particular group.
New college graduates have the most to learn about how to transition to the business world.
In school, you work with a few people on simple projects that last a semester at most.
At work, you may work for years as a part of a huge multi-team effort involving thousands (think Windows).
Learning how to write good software in this environment is different from learning algorithms in a class.
Traditionally, SDEs learn this from more experienced peers sitting together in an office.
It could be that the lack of this informal tutoring means that more new graduates are struggling to get up to speed.
New college graduates as a group tend to have a lot of factors that might make in-office work in a downtown office more appealing:
Far less likely to be married with kids and need good schools.
More able (because of point #1) to live in an apartment near the office and have a short commute.
More interested in a social work environment.
The rub here is that the experienced workers a company needs to mentor the new graduates are more likely to be the opposite.
Married with kids, wanting suburban homes and schools, leading to long commutes.
These people do not need mentorship themselves and can work effectively remotely.
This leads to a possible win/lose equation.
A company can make a logical decision to force experienced workers, who are more productive at home, to come into the office for the greater good.
In short, "you commute in order to teach our new people."
Thus what might be best for the company and for the workforce overall may not be best for all individuals.
Of course, remote work is hardly the only case where this is true. Standard 9 to 5 office hours are not best for night owls, either.
I do not have a perfect solution to this problem.
My point is that the leadership decision is complicated. Frustrate and alienate your experienced team members, or leave your new hires struggling?
The third path is to innovate.
Come up with tools and processes that achieve the same necessary long-term new hire training and growth without using offices and commutes as the tool.
Audience Insights
I have consolidated additional ideas worth considering from my LinkedIn audience, including:
Replicating in-office serendipity and dynamism is hard. If you work in a fully remote or hybrid environment, as a leader and peer, think about how you can:
Replicate before/after meeting hallway conversations/feedback.
Be available and make it clear that people can come to you with hard conversations.
Actively check-in with people a few times a week. Setting aside 30 minutes a day can have an outsized impact.
Publish and share best practices across departments and orgs.
Create a feedback form for team members of all levels to share proposals and up/down vote other ideas. Everyone is learning with this new environment.
Regardless of the work-from environment, when it comes to new/junior employees, coaching and mentoring is critical to success. As leaders, think about how you incentivize senior members to coach and mentor junior members, for example:
Do senior members get additional bonuses if junior members hit certain metrics or milestones?
How does coaching and team feedback influence performance and promotion reviews?
Assign new team members an “Onboarding Buddy” who can turn into a potential mentor.
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