Yes and no, depends on the engineering culture and the management. I was successful in this sort of position as a full-time remote senior and then a team lead from 2016 til 2022. I changed employers and found myself in an environment that simply did not understand pairing, mentoring, etc. Management was oftentimes directly in the way, confused about loss of "velocity" and other trivial bullshit, despite the fact that the team was shipping in overdrive. I left at the start of this year and am now back in a position where these things are valued, encouraged, and happening remotely.
I am one of those people and work a fully remote job, but I had to earn that credibility with years of being a top contributor first. It would be difficult to just walk into the role.
I wrote a sibling comment alluding to the same, having been that person across a few different employers now. The struggles I had certainly, to a large degree, boiled down to a lack of trust (walking into a new team/department/company is hard on both sides!), but that wasn't the full story. IMO, management needs to have the right mindset to establish culture, too.
That would depend on the culture of your team and larger workplace. Healthy teams should be checking in frequently to talk about ideas, reviewing big things, scoping upcoming work, etc. If there's time reserved for deeply technical but loosely structured discussion like that, then everybody takes turns being that person. In that env someone could "specialize" in it and help inspire others to do great work.
It's the team that creates that kind of opportunity for feedback though. If the team has dysfunctions like rejecting deeper discussion or not working beyond jira tickets or checking out at meetings, etc. then it's not going to work. Someone that's good at that kind of supporting discussion will feel push back when fostering those discussions so it will fall off over time.
The teams that do the best work and are the most fun to be on can host those types of discussions though, even remotely. It's worth experiencing if you haven't!
I assume you mean the thoughtful person whose probing questions unlock and unblock everyone else.
Lunchtime conversation is only one enabler of this.
I suspect the person is Hamming, as he makes reference to this in his book The Art of Doing Science and Engineering.
This aspect of what it takes to be a Hamming is curiosity about what other people are doing; you can track this by reading shipped emails or lurking in slack channels, then reaching out individually to the people/teams involved when you wonder about something.
Hamming was intentional about doing this at lunch. The magic isn't lunch, it is in intentionally seeking the information and then acting on it.
Yeah the main thing I've found helps is if there's a regular Teams/Zoom meeting where everyone just pops in for like 30 min to ask questions. Then you can use that as the springpad to launch into one-on-one sessions.
You do need to cultivate a culture in the team of people being willing to lower their guard and ask questions though. And I think the key to this is just staying humble so people feel comfortable approaching you.
