My previous team had zero problem onboarding people remotely. The steps are extremely simple:
1. Have a collaborative culture. This is difficult at some places. But an environment where people are free to spin up zoom meetings and ask questions goes a long way. RTFM culture is the worst. Yes there are devs who don't bother reading the docs, but I find they often don't know how or where to look.
2. We had watercoolers in the afternoon. People could just chat. It may seem like a hugely ineffective process BUT... about 30%-40% of the time it would be about work. Knowledge would be distributed to multiple people, social bonds would form, and blockers would often be resolved. This led to high trust teams with multiple SMEs some of whom were "JR" devs.
3. README or wiki. Currently working at a FAANG company and several repos have no README. Wiki's are out of date. Knowledge is fragmented. I don't blame other devs, but it's kind of insane how much technical debt there is.
Also a UT Option III student, same as you. I too regret doing the program. It just feels like such a hassle and to your point it is extremely disorganized.
I will say certain instructors like Vijay Garg make the program feel worth it. You learn new material, read research papers, and have implementations around research papers. His courses were the reason I stuck around. I took his advanced algorithms and distributed systems courses which were great.
One of the great things about the US having distributed governance is that, while this occured, it was barely a blip in my life. It didn't really affect any crucial services or facilities.
Much like people turned to Trump, people turned to alternative media because they feel the neoliberal establishment isn't telling them the 'truth.'
I don't blame them, but it is what it is. People act as if the government and "Large Media Corp" deserve to be trusted when the US is more than willing to foment unrest in foreign countries. Whose to say they aren't willing to manipulate the cattle within their own confines?
The haircut comments drive me up the wall, particularly if you know someone who owns a small business and their accompanying struggles. Economic money movement was stalled, which can have an enormous impact on livelihood. While I can absolutely understand being critical of when protestors wanted things to re-open, it shows a deliberate attempt at being unable to empathize.
InfoSec raises vulnerabilities that show up on reports that get managers scared.
Developers have to continually update to accomodate. Even for non-prod deps. You can raise exceptions, but that's a completely separate can of worms.
Managers wonder why dev work is slowed down.