> I've found I generally have to explicitly ask if I want someone to explain what they're doing and why. There is very little 1:1 teaching/mentoring. In an office I think there is more informal mentoring.
Asking people questions and engaging in 1-1 conversations is no more difficult over Slack + voice + screen share than in person. In fact it gives you more options for how to conduct the conversation and remember the results.
It's really not hard, and some people are great at it. The problem is that people sleepwalk through their remote experience and don't spend any time thinking about how to make the small changes needed to fill the needs that in-office used to fill. For some reason, it only occurs to them to seek out information if they can walk to a person in a room rather than type in a box.
I constantly observe people excitedly blabbing in person, seemingly reaching all sorts of epiphanies, but at the end of the day, the conversation lacked specificity and no one really learned anything. It's a perfect medium for feeling like you learned something without actually doing so.
Figuring out how to make remote work produces better results when the team is willing to do it. It enhances all work, including in-person work, and there are lots of resources by now for how to do it well. But if the team is unwilling to do it, no surprise that remote doesn't work for them. They chose to make in-office the only possible way to work.
It's not an inherent thing to the environments, but a choice that particular team made.
There is a massive difference between Slack and in-person. In-person there is often a casualness that doesn't exist over Slack. It's hard to have a serendipitous conversation over Slack vs in-person. This is what I meant by "I think there is more informal mentoring [in an office]".
> I constantly observe people excitedly blabbing in person, seemingly reaching all sorts of epiphanies, but at the end of the day, the conversation lacked specificity and no one really learned anything. It's a perfect medium for feeling like you learned something without actually doing so
Generally I would much prefer feeling like I've intuited something rather than coming away with specific knowledge because specific knowledge is usually easy to find elsewhere.
> It's not an inherent thing to the environments, but a choice that particular team made
I believe it is inherent to a remote environment. I also believe it can be overcome, but it's not the path of least resistance.
Asking people questions and engaging in 1-1 conversations is no more difficult over Slack + voice + screen share than in person. In fact it gives you more options for how to conduct the conversation and remember the results.
It's really not hard, and some people are great at it. The problem is that people sleepwalk through their remote experience and don't spend any time thinking about how to make the small changes needed to fill the needs that in-office used to fill. For some reason, it only occurs to them to seek out information if they can walk to a person in a room rather than type in a box.
I constantly observe people excitedly blabbing in person, seemingly reaching all sorts of epiphanies, but at the end of the day, the conversation lacked specificity and no one really learned anything. It's a perfect medium for feeling like you learned something without actually doing so.
Figuring out how to make remote work produces better results when the team is willing to do it. It enhances all work, including in-person work, and there are lots of resources by now for how to do it well. But if the team is unwilling to do it, no surprise that remote doesn't work for them. They chose to make in-office the only possible way to work.
It's not an inherent thing to the environments, but a choice that particular team made.