The whole reason FANG companies hire new grades is because a small fraction will become superstars in a few years. And a small handful of those superstars will stay out of loyalty/comfort/inertia. New grads are basically deep out of the money, long-dated call options. Companies aren't going to care whether it takes them 3 months or 6 months to get acclimated to the org's culture.
Plus reading here about certain companies' interest in pruning people ruthlessly...
I could see why morale among new hires would be problematic in this rather chaotic time.
That's all done in chat now. Which on a personal level, that's how I've done it for a quarter of a century, but it's like that at work now too.
Additionally, someone who's new is much easier to spot and thus be reminded of when they're physically proximate. Someone new on chat who doesn't have much to contribute yet can very easily vanish, so while they may be able to pull information from others, much less information will be deliberately pushed their way.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but we have millennia of culture and evolution built around in-person interactions.
I haven't seen that. What type of conversations that used to be public are you seeing being moved to private now that things are done through chat?
So if today's new grads are telling you "I'm drowning" and two years ago they weren't... maybe you should listen.
And measured productivity is only half of it if a sizable fraction of those frustrated new grads leave much sooner than they would otherwise.
Or if "new grad" experiences also tend to match "new hire" experiences even for experienced folks...
It's absolutely vital to recreate the same onboarding experience (seeing someone all day, being there whenever a question is asked, etc) virtually, and that means putting in the extra effort in making onesself available, checking in, and being proactive.
I was a new grad in the analog world. The same kind of uncertainty existed for me. Sometimes a coworker who was supposed to help me just didn't talk to me. Many managers were just as poor then as they are now, in person or online, at setting and communicating expectations.
And there were additional problems in person that don't exist in the same way online. Particularly for women ... bullying and inappropriate attention from the men; envy and criticism from the women.
Also, early on in this pandemic, people and companies were scrambling in general. So, the chaos of onboarding may not have been a problem with onboarding per se, or even with companies not handling it "well" but just a shared difficulty.
Nurturing early career engineers in a remote setting is definitely something companies need to get better at.
You helped your company by saving senior engineers' precious time.
Going to office has been the best possible thing for me. I can see my coworkers, understand the expectations set for me, get instant help from coworkers (and often provide instant help). My anxiety is better and my health is better. I'm not distracted by the 10,000 things around my house that I either want to do or need to do.
That being said, that's only my experience. I think the research shows that remote work is just as productive, if not better. It's better for people who really need to take care of personal things during work hours. The opposition to remote work is far too forceful, especially when companies don't even intend to back up their threats (like in your case). Leadership in many companies seems against the idea for WFH for all the wrong reasons. They need to understand it's a real risk trying to force employees to come back to the office, and you can certainly lose some very important talent by doing that.