My current team manager is also an IC and is the first manager I had this last two years who understand that code review and mentorship were harder and less efficient onprem and that our non-remote days should be dedicated to informal meetings about architecture and design decisions. And eating together.
First time I have less than 3 hours of meeting a week too (the rule he enforce is no more than 5 hours, even the tech lead/architect), everything else should be 1:1. First time I've been this productive (and I'm only two months in).
Yes. Typically, those were very junior ones in their first job, who were still learning the ropes. Ramping up on a complicated codebase in a remote setup was very hard for them. Also some senior ICs who wanted to design nuances of a complex system. Amount of work we got done in a few hours with a whiteboard was much more than what we achieved over a few weeks of remote "collaboration".
My current team manager is also an IC and is the first manager I had this last two years who understand that code review and mentorship were harder and less efficient onprem and that our non-remote days should be dedicated to informal meetings about architecture and design decisions. And eating together.
First time I have less than 3 hours of meeting a week too (the rule he enforce is no more than 5 hours, even the tech lead/architect), everything else should be 1:1. First time I've been this productive (and I'm only two months in).