It struck me as I read through the traits of "great remote workers" (wondering, as a remote worker myself, if I had these traits and was thus a great one) that it's never going to be easy to hire a junior developer - or a junior anything, really - in a remote role: in particular, the ability to prioritise is something that you can really only acquire with experience, and "propensity towards action" is a little pointless unless you're actioning the right things; likewise, many developers, in particular, take some time to get their written communication up to an acceptable level; and as for trustworthiness... well, a junior developer is just as (if not more) likely to be honest than anyone else, but would you actually really trust that they're doing it right, based on your past experiences?
This leads me to the conclusion that remote working is perhaps best reserved for those with a little more experience, and that maybe this great movement away from centralised offices may never quite materialise in the way that some seem to imagine it inevitably will. Perhaps I'm wrong though!
It struck me as I read through the traits of "great remote workers" (wondering, as a remote worker myself, if I had these traits and was thus a great one) that it's never going to be easy to hire a junior developer - or a junior anything, really - in a remote role: in particular, the ability to prioritise is something that you can really only acquire with experience, and "propensity towards action" is a little pointless unless you're actioning the right things; likewise, many developers, in particular, take some time to get their written communication up to an acceptable level; and as for trustworthiness... well, a junior developer is just as (if not more) likely to be honest than anyone else, but would you actually really trust that they're doing it right, based on your past experiences?
This leads me to the conclusion that remote working is perhaps best reserved for those with a little more experience, and that maybe this great movement away from centralised offices may never quite materialise in the way that some seem to imagine it inevitably will. Perhaps I'm wrong though!