You are not alone. Senior engineers in general - all of the leads I’ve talked to - feel like the current situation is completely broken. I can imagine it works for relatively low-technology low-complexity teams or very very small teams, but it is disastrous for complex and medium/large teams and projects. It’s just very challenging to impossible to keep an appropriate level of awareness.
I don't understand how being in the office helps you keep an appropriate level of awareness. Because you can walk up to someone and determine how far along they are with a project? Isn't that what Jira etc are for?
I can't answer for others, but I'm involved in a large team inside of a large department where it can be difficult to understand who really owns a piece of code, and we're all expected to be able to slice all the way across the codebase.
I can't tell you how many times I'm heard a team mate mention something that they're working on that I have direct knowledge about and I've been able to cut a week of time off their project. And vice-versa, they've helped me.
I usually don't care about exactly what they're doing or how far along they are. If I need that information I join that group's regular sync, or check the bug status, or ping them and ask.
It's more about knowledge that a project actually exists. I have about 5 projects that I'm actively leading and another 10 or so that have been backlogged or deferred. There are about 50 people at my level in the department, so I assume there are at least 200 active projects, and I can't handle that firehose. Actually, I'm positive that there are at least 200 projects of various sizes ongoing, and I may be low by a full order of magnitude.
But when a question comes through my team, the fact that we can overhear what's going on and tune in or tune out can make or a break a project.
