I think you articulated a sentiment a lot of people have very well. For the non-decision makers, there is a strange dichotomy I see with coding.
Remotely, I’m vastly more productive in getting coding work done. I’m sure most people would agree. But that productivity is almost erased by onboarding new hires. There are so many aspects of software engineering where it’s so much easier to be sitting next to someone, pointing at their monitor, and discussing what and why you are doing something. Instead, you need to hop on a call and awkwardly screen share on a call or write out paragraphs of text to impart the knowledge. In my experience, having such barriers to doing these things makes new hires much less likely to reach out and put themselves into the situations where they can learn, no matter how much they are told it’s ok to bother people.
To me, this is why remote works so much better at smaller companies with less bespoke tooling and legacy code. There’s no better way to learn than in person and there is a huge productivity boost when doing so. That said, personally, I’m willing to deal with the lower productivity in my work life to get the higher productivity in my real life by being able to do laundry during the day and not sit in traffic.
> ’s so much easier to be sitting next to someone, pointing at their monitor, and discussing what and why you are doing something. Instead, you need to hop on a call and awkwardly screen share on a call or write out paragraphs of text to impart the knowledge
For me, it's the exact opposite.
Before the pandemic, I always found the practice (and even the idea!) of "pairing" quite off-putting. You're standing behind someone, breathing in their body odor, awkwardly sweating next to each other, bending over if you want to type something... a really weird experience.
Remotely, none of those apply! You each get your own keyboard, your own screen, your own mouse. Both of you are 100% comfortable in your own environment. Using decent software helps as well, I recommend Tuple which makes sharing the mouse & keyboard seamless.
Pair programming doesn't involve anyone standing behind anyone else or bending over. I think you're describing a sort of "hanging around and kind of doing some programming together", which is probably a more common practice than pair programming, and a rather under-documented one!
I'm guessing you've never actually spent 8 hours or so in a stuffy office doing hard/stressful work with people who also take walks (e.g. to go get lunch and get back to the office in 30 allotted minutes).
Also some people wear too much deodorant.
I agree, none of this is an issue if working with clean, civilised people... a few feet away. It can quickly become uncomfortable if you're too close to each other.
I am at the point where remote works better for me for a lot of what are ostensibly team / collaborative activities.
For example, incident handling has been lot more efficient for us with the team looking at different aspects and sharing on a call/huddle than what we often used to naturally do (involving a gaggle forming around 1 person's computer with different people offering suggestions of varying usefulness).
Demos and knowledge sharing I find also work better remote now than they used to in person now that people are used to the tooling.
I slightly prefer onboarding remote also, but that is because I'm the kind of person who gets distracted by wondering if I'm sitting too close or maybe I have not enough or too much deodorant etc.
The only thing that suffers remotely for me at this point is engagement. There's something about physically being with other people that makes their problems and desires seem more important to me, and I don't have any good hacks for giving more of a &"@$.
> Remotely, I’m vastly more productive in getting coding work done. I’m sure most people would agree.
I certainly don't agree at all. Home is where all the distractions are. Home is where i can drift off to make a cup of tea and end up spending an hour reading the newspaper without anyone noticing.
I think it would be useful to understand the distribution of peoples' feelings and experience about this. I have seen so many remote work enthusiasts just taking it as read that everyone prefers remote work because they do.
Sure, I get that. But the office has just as many if not more distractions. Much easier to get pulled into a conversation while getting tea at the office.
Yes, I am going through this right now as a new hire onboarding to a boutique codebase. As soon as you are 100% reliant on internal docs, you realize just how large the gap is between them and mainstream OSS libraries.
I think a decent middle-ground between "Document everything" and "Organically relay all information" is to just write "doc-stubs". Just a list of everything out there with no real content. It gives people a jumping off point to ask questions and lets them know what they don't know.
> t’s so much easier to be sitting next to someone, pointing at their monitor, and discussing what and why you are doing something
This feels like a tech choice issue to me. I'm constantly on calls with either slack/pop sharing where anyone can draw on the shared screen, or shared coding session like in vscode where you can see each other's cursors. It... works the same for me as pointing at the screen. Just without it being awkward when it's more than 2 people getting to cram into a a small space.
Remotely, I’m vastly more productive in getting coding work done. I’m sure most people would agree. But that productivity is almost erased by onboarding new hires. There are so many aspects of software engineering where it’s so much easier to be sitting next to someone, pointing at their monitor, and discussing what and why you are doing something. Instead, you need to hop on a call and awkwardly screen share on a call or write out paragraphs of text to impart the knowledge. In my experience, having such barriers to doing these things makes new hires much less likely to reach out and put themselves into the situations where they can learn, no matter how much they are told it’s ok to bother people.
To me, this is why remote works so much better at smaller companies with less bespoke tooling and legacy code. There’s no better way to learn than in person and there is a huge productivity boost when doing so. That said, personally, I’m willing to deal with the lower productivity in my work life to get the higher productivity in my real life by being able to do laundry during the day and not sit in traffic.