Fully agree. I'm all for remote work. However, in my first 2 years of programming, being able to go the the office, put my laptop and notebook down next to a senior dev, point and say, "Help me," was so valuable.
seems more like a culture problem, i have my calendar very public, all my junior devs know ill get on a zoom with no hesitation and they actually seem to enjoy the screen sharing, every zoom is recorded with AI summary/transcript so they’re more focused on asking questions instead of taking notes (and i think they’re really solid juniors and actually go back and watch)
there’s the whiteboard element but i’ve gotten pretty good at exalidraw and zoom annotating
add in the remote makes it kinda easy to not be distracting in meetings so i can easily DM them context on the side to get them ramped up easier
Screen share on slack or teams gives you the same. I’d routinely work with remote teammates that way, and we’d jump in a control each others machines as needed. We’d do hours of that as a team, breaking into breakout rooms as necessary. Much more effective that a hot conference room
Part of being in the office is that you pick up on what's going on around you. Coworkers might discuss some issue and you might decide to listen in, and so on.
That's the bit I really notice I am missing out on when I work at home.
I’ve never known the joy of sitting with someone more experienced to ask for help; I’ve either always been the most knowledgeable in the room (which is not necessarily saying much) or I was the only one in the room.
With AI coding agents, I finally feel like I can tap the shoulder of a pro for help.
It’s not the absolute expert, and I know it’ll make mistakes. But much more knowledgeable than me at certain technologies and techniques.