[megaframe]

After fighting for years to work from home full time (and loving it now). I see one big problem I have no fix for, training new grad / junior engineers.

Feel free to correct me if you have tools to do it, but I found training someone new like that over Video calls way too hard. It slows them down it slows me down, and their time to become productive goes up 4x. While I don't want to return to commuting I'm willing to compromise 1-3 days a week (at my discretion) to make training possible.

[francisofascii]

Honestly I think it works better, in some ways. I can share my screen and demo what I am doing, and they can follow along on their machine or vice versa. You can also take control of their machine. Rather than huddled together staring at the same screen. If something doesn't work on their machine, I can try it locally on my machine without having to walk back to my office to try whatever commands they were trying. Don't get me wrong, in person training is valuable, but even if we are in the office, sometimes we still setup a video call for some tasks.

[justinmchase]

We park in an open team chat for hours at a time. And by open I mean its unscheduled, open for any dev and people just pop in and out as they desire. Someone is always screen sharing and we work on problems together, a new person can absorb or drive things, get realtime feedback. You can popout and just focus as needed, its casual.

Sort of like discord but its code instead of games.

[vincentmarle]

That’s a great idea, what tool do you use for that?

[GeoAtreides]

Screenshare with audio only. Video occupies too much mental bandwidth (human brains prioritize face recognition to the detriment of all other processes)

[rr808]

This is a big plus for me. Previously I spent a lot of time being interrupted and helping grads. Now I can safely ignore them.

[asdff]

What exactly are you missing? With screen sharing its the same thing if not easier than looking back and forth at two laptop screens parked next to eachother. If its about those serendipitous questions, you could sit on a zoom call with your team all hard at work for the entire day and just don't say anything until someone has a question about something. It would function exactly the same as just sitting around some office, only better because zoom breakout rooms for more specific discussions with a few people are orders of magnitude easier than finding a free conference room for a impromptu work meeting in my experience.

[fartcannon]

Why are you making them use video calls. How much business was conducted over audio phone calls before the pandemic? Most of it, I'd bet. Just call them and chat as if they were in a satellite office.