Maybe it varies by field. For myself, onboarding new developers has felt about the same as it did in person. I can't just stop by their desk but banging a message into chat and then starting a call if their response seems to far off track is not that much harder. A little friction but isn't it part of my job to get past that and make sure this person is productive as quickly as possible?
Overall my team has improved with remote work. Before the pandemic it was a struggle to find developers, in large part because of our location (expensive New England college town) and the (unspoken but clear) requirement that people come to the office every day. Now my current team is comprised of developers from Toronto, Sweden, etc. We hit our targets and get work done.
I wouldn't trade it for anything and I hope the pay grade above me realizes the concrete importance of the people and the work over this abstract idea of "community".
A sage mentor of mine, who was also a major proponent of remote work, said this about hiring remote: “Do you really want to limit your candidate pool to those within driving distance to your office? Why not your entire country? Time zone? Planet?”
Overall my team has improved with remote work. Before the pandemic it was a struggle to find developers, in large part because of our location (expensive New England college town) and the (unspoken but clear) requirement that people come to the office every day. Now my current team is comprised of developers from Toronto, Sweden, etc. We hit our targets and get work done.
I wouldn't trade it for anything and I hope the pay grade above me realizes the concrete importance of the people and the work over this abstract idea of "community".