A friend in the construction industry has been dealing with this since COVID WFH started. He works with a lot of different architects, designers, suppliers, and so on that have to coordinate work. He also has to track the costs of mistakes and extra time lost due to drawing issues, errors, missed change orders and so on.
As soon as COVID WFH started, the rate of errors spiked upward. It didn’t decline until companies brought their employees back into the office. He now goes out of his way to work with companies that have gone back to in-office work because it’s the simplest and most predictable way to reduce the amount of money he loses to simple errors.
So, like every corporation.
Juniors need seniors more than they need docs.
It’s very possible to just shoot the juniors a DM asking how they’re doing. or having an active team channel where people can ask for help or offer direction.
The screen context switching is a killer.
over chat i have the opportunity to take a minute to wrap up what i’m doing. I also walk away with a written record, so if ive asked for help, i have reference to go back to. which can then serve as a starting point for documentation. or others in the chat can read and passively absorb information. or contribute to the conversation.
Certain phases of work and types of teams do alright remotely - typically a team with a lot of senior engineers in mid-project flow with few external dependencies. But a team with a significant number of juniors, faced with multiple blockers or external dependencies will underperform badly compared to in-person working.
Whole days will go missing because of a lack of effective communication - the simple ability to lean over and check or ask how someone is doing. Not to mention the inability of learners to just pick up information through incidental conversation and overhearing other people talking.