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Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead, study finds
(www.washingtonpost.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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I want to work from home, at least part time, but the other two developers we have need quite a bit of handholding. They are good people and I want to keep them around, but if left to their own devices they would not work at all.
How can I get to the point where we can all work from home part time, without spending half of my day micromanaging them or keeping them on a WebCam just to be sure they’re working? I definitely don’t want to do that shit.
To do this without being a helicopter manager, state clearly to them what your goal is. Most employees will work with you if the end result is wfh without a nannycam. Explain you need a way to confirm work product in a way that management can approve of without being too invasive, and keeping on pace with in office work.
In truth, you should not care if they slack off half the day as long as they produce quality work product at a similar rate. Wfh is fewer interruptions and meetings, and means already they will have more "free" time. This is a management principle that is hard to accept, but insisting on the appearance of work is detrimental. Obviously this varies based on the type of work, but yours sounds like a software development situation. "so long as your reports are filed and your queue is cleared every 48 hours, your pace is up to you".
Give them the rope to hang themselves with. Tell them that's what you're doing. Maybe one dev prefers to go easy then crunch for 6 hours on the 2nd of that 2 day cycle, for example.
Ultimately you cannot teach people to be responsible but you get far more positive results from treating people with trust and positivity than with skepticism and monitoring. That makes you less a team and more "the other".
Obviously this advice may not apply in your situation but in general try where you can to apply this in principle.
The rope. I’m afraid they will immediately hang themselves. They’re juniors, they need guidance. It’s difficult to guide people over Slack.
We do need better tasks created, and since we don’t have a proper PM, that usually falls on me. We aren’t a deadline oriented company. We all know what the project is. You take the time you need to make it happen. But historically, they have been waiting until the last minute to make the product and it comes back buggy. I’d be less concerned about what they do with their time if everything was spot-on. It’s getting a lot better, but not to where I’m comfortable just letting them loose.
That's fair. Still might be worth openly discussing that as a goal even if it's nothing you can act on now. Let them show competence on their own perhaps.
Anyways, you sound like you already have the right mentality. Good looking out for your teammates.
personally I don't think WFH is viable or productive for Junior devs, they need to learn a lot to be productive and unless they are the type they won't learn it on their own time.
They do need to learn. They’re fine once you explain it. Mostly it’s issues with the bigger picture, not just a single task. We try to let them take a whole project from back to front. That includes database and api design. Sometimes it’s great, but often they are way over complicating things. K.I.S.S.
Why over complicate this? Tell them the expectations and if they can't live up to those then fire them. It's up to them to learn to either be professional or find a job in the office.
That’s one way to do it.
I’m a tech manager with a 100% remote team of seven employees. We’re a very high performing team overall, and I give minimal hand-holding while still fostering a collaborative working environment.
First off, you need to make outcomes clear. Assign tasks, and expect them to get done in a reasonable timeframe. But beyond that, there should be no reason to micro-manage actual working hours. If some developer needs some time during the day to run an errand and wants to catch up in the evening, fine by me. I don’t need them to be glued to their desk 9-5/10-6 or for some set part of the day — so long as the tasks are getting done in reasonable time, I let me employees structure their working hours as they see fit.
Three times a week we have regular whole-team checkins (MWF), where everyone can give a status update on their tasks. This helps keep up accountability.
Once a month I reserve an hour for each employee to just have a general sync-up. I allow the employee to guide how this time is used — whether they want to talk about issues with outstanding tasks, problems they’re encountering, their personal lives, or just “shoot the shit”. I generally keep these meetings light and employee-directed, and it gives me a chance to stay connected with them on both a social level and understand what challenges they might be facing.
And that’s it. I’ve actually gone as far as having certain employees who were being threatened with back-to-office mandates to have them converted to “remote employee” in the HR database so they’d have to lay off threatening them — only 2 of my 7 employees are even in the same general area of the globe (my employees are spread in 3 different countries at the moment), and I don’t live somewhere with an office, so having some employees forced to report to an office doesn’t help me in the slightest (I can’t be in 6 places at once — I live far enough away I can’t be in any of those places on a regular basis!).
Your employees may have got used to you micro-managing them. Changing this won’t happen overnight. Change from a micro-manager into a coach, and set them free. And if they fail…then it’s time to talk to HR and to see about making some changes. HTH!
This is good advice, thank you. But HR… ugh I hate that.
I certainly wouldn’t run to HR right away — but unfortunately, it’s true sometimes that people just aren’t a good fit for whatever reason. Deadweight that isn’t able to accomplish the tasks that need to be done doesn’t do you any favours — if you’re doing your job and their jobs because they just can’t handle the tasks that’s hardly fair to you, and isn’t doing the organization any good — eventually you’ll burn out, nobody will pickup the slack, and everyone will suffer for it.
My first instinct in your situation however would be that everyone has got used to the status quo, including the staff you have to constantly mentor. Hopefully if you can coach them into doing the work for themselves and keeping them accountable to tasks and completion dates will help change the dynamic.
If people don’t work when you’re not around, then I’m afraid your workplace has a bad culture. And chances are you are part of a dynamic that makes others not work when you’re not there, even though that’s not your intention.
Check the literature on “employee empowerment “, here’s a link to get started: https://hbr.org/2023/03/5-strategies-to-empower-employees-to-make-decisions
That's a big jump. it's possible! of course, but some people actually do need the supervision.
I disagree. If you need to keep your coworkers in front of a webcam for half a day to make sure they work, then I think your workplace’s culture is messed up and you’re part of an unhealthy dynamic. I believe supervision is something different.
I wouldn't bother with the webcam monitoring, but there are absolutely people who will barely work if they aren't actively engaged with teammates frequently.
It could be because they don't understand something or don't have confidence to do task without some ad-hoc training, and sometimes this is just easier to navigate face to face (someone getting starting may be shy about soliciting help, or may feel intimidated by the prospect of "interrupting" someone important.
It could be that they just lack the discipline to stay on task if too many options open up.
It could be that they need the cover of work as "bad guy" to get them away from family members that don't take their remote work seriously and impose on them.
Especially Juniors who are great when they are focused, but can easily get distracted.
I’ll read that, but fuck you. Blaming me, a developer on the same level as them, is not cool. I’m not on my phone all day. I’m not taking 20 breaks. I’m not playing with my dog at home instead of working. It’s not a ME issue. This is literally the most open and supportive company I’ve worked for, and I’ve worked at some shitty places.
Work by setting goals, that's the true essence of smart working I think
And when goals aren’t met?
I think this doesn't depend on whether they wfh or not, but I don't manage people