How to make friends and influence bosses when everyone's camera is off on Zoom.
 | By Eleanor Barkhorn Editor at Large, Opinion |
I never went to journalism school, but my first years as a junior editor at a magazine were an education. I learned how to write snappy headlines by listening to senior editors bat ideas back and forth in meetings. I learned the art of line editing by sitting next to my boss and watching him go through drafts with a red pen. I learned that if I wanted to have a real, unhurried conversation with my supervisor, I should get to work 15 minutes early and catch him before the busyness of the day set in. |
These lessons all have one obvious thing in common: I learned them by being physically in the office, observing my colleagues as they did their jobs. I've thought about those early years as young people have entered the work force during the Covid pandemic, many of them starting their first jobs entirely remotely. |
What must it be like to embark on a career without being able to observe your boss or build friendships with your co-workers over lunches and happy hour beers? |
As Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel write in their guest essay, workers starting remote jobs during the pandemic do have it pretty bad. Petersen and Warzel describe workers who struggle to learn their company's culture when people don't turn on their cameras during video meetings, who get almost no regular contact with their bosses, who wonder how to make friends with their colleagues when doing happy hour together is not an option. |
And Petersen and Warzel have a warning for employers who oversee remote workplaces. "If companies don't create intentional, structured mentorship programs to help younger and remote colleagues with on-the-job learning, they risk leaving a generation behind," they write. |
For many professions, some form of remote work is here to stay. Even after the pandemic recedes, new workers won't necessarily have access to the learning-by-watching education that I benefited from in my early years. But employers still have a responsibility to their young workers. The stakes are high, and companies must learn to adapt. |
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