Junior developers in a remote working environment [closed]

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Our company is looking to introduce remote working as an option for its developers.

This book (Remote: Office not required) has been offering some valuable guidance.

However one issue that is not addressed is the employment and management of junior level developers.

In a remote working environment, how do you ensure that junior developers receive the same standard of guidance and experience that they would gain from being around more senior developers in an office environment?

Answer 1

The same way you do in a non-remote working environment: code-reviews, code-reviews, code-reviews. Use headsets and a good collaborative software which allows two people to work together virtually on the same screen.

Of course, for things like making a sketch on a piece of paper or a physical whiteboard you need an electronical pendant, but that should not be much of a problem.

EDIT: of course, there is also a lot of truth in what @JayScott wrote: having junior devs completely out of your local office introduces some risk that you loose some effectiveness in guidance and quality, that's unavoidable. But IMHO this depends a lot on the actual people involved.

Answer 2

In my opinion, not possible. Doc Brown's outlined the main way you can ensure as much progress and quality as possible, but I don't think this will equate to the quality of guidance and progress monitoring a junior would receive whilst working in an office.

To address your question - mimic an office environment as much as possible using conferencing and collaboration technologies, but I do think even with this you're taking a risk.

NOTE: I say 'not possible' because you've stated they're junior, and I'm very aware of how much extra guidance is needed in any scenario with a junior developer. For what it's worth, I think senior developers benefit from having the space to work remotely over an office environment.

Answer 3

The reason usually given for having remote junior developers is cost savings. People in the decision-making chain needs to understand the effort involved to make the cost savings possible and not assume that offshoring automatically equals big cost savings.

I (based in North America) got a successful team of junior developers in Bangaluru to be self-sustaining as a remote entity, but it takes work. I went to India and trained a team of eight developers for three weeks. During this time I got a sense for how each worked on their own as part of the larger team (helping their co-workers, taking leadership roles, etc.). Then I whittled down the team to the four who made the strongest team. When I returned to North America I committed to pairing with remote team members via web conference during their business hours (middle of my night). The other US-based senior developer and I did code reviews of all changes made for several months, always requiring robust unit tests for any committed code.

So it was a lot of work but we were able to retain the team for a few years and it probably saved a little bit of money.

As stated in other comments/answers, mentoring less experienced resources is important, and doing so remotely is more difficult than doing so in person. But it is possible.