Developer Onboarding
I am notorious for screwing up my travel. I have screwed up more times than my pride will allow me to quantify.
I remember one time when we happened to actually get to the airport early. We were so glad that we did because there was a huge line to check bags. We stood in line forever. Right before we were at the front of the line we were informed that we were actually IN THE WRONG LINE.
I was pissed, it was confusing the way the airline had set things up and it appeared that we needed to be in that line when in reality we could have just gone straight to the bag drop kiosks.
I am very familiar with airports and airline procedure but when things are unclear it is hard to navigate familiar territory.
What's my point?
You are likely going to have very competent people joining your team. They may have been in product organizations and the functions inside of a product organization will be very familiar to them. However, every company is different and making sure that your new team members are getting up to speed fast is your responsibility. You don’t want them stuck in the wrong line when you can quickly point them in the right direction
The Basics
Every company will have different requirements for what a person needs to do to be onboarded fully. As a development manager you need to have a framework for how you are going to be getting people up to speed on your team. Your company may have a process to onboard people and your product team may have a process as well.
Here is the basics for your process:
Share the vision for your company and your team. Start with why!
Schedule out the 30, 60, 90 day touch points.
Make sure they have access to all necessary systems. For example, they need to be able to create a support ticket to internal IT.
They need to understand how to log work and hours if they are tracked.
Walk them through architecture and internal documentation.
Have them clone, build, debug and test core applications the team is working on
Add to this list anything that is particular to your company.
Dont feel like you need to do this all yourself. I create a quick matrix and assign team members the task of training the new guy on different items. Have the new employee record the sessions and they will have a reference for their first few weeks on the job.
The Algorithm
The basics are table stakes and can be done in the first few days. It gets them into the organization and arms them with the tools they need to succeed. But they are far from being onboarded. They need the institutional knowledge. The information that exists only in peoples heads. This can take a long time and be tricky to do. However, I recently read a post by Ryan Peterman on how to onboard that had some advice on how to speed it up.
Peterman has a lot of good advice so give it a read but in particular he referenced a process created by Boz, the CTO at Meta. This is easy to remember and easy to do.
The first step is to find someone on the team and ask for 30 minutes with them. In that meeting you have a simple agenda:
For the first 25 minutes: ask them to tell you everything they think you should know. Take copious notes. Only stop them to ask about things you don’t understand. Always stop them to ask about things you don’t understand.
For the next 3 minutes: ask about the biggest challenges the team has right now.
In the final 2 minutes: ask who else you should talk to. Write down every name they give you.
Repeat the above process for every name you’re given. Don’t stop until there are no new names.
I like things that are simple. The amount of complexity we deal with on a regular basis can be overwhelming, especially if you are joining a new company. This process gives a clear start and stop point and it gives a natural reason to approach people.
Give this process to your new hires and see what they do with it.
Improve
If you did the basics and scheduled out the 30/60/90 day meetings once your new employee has joined you should check in on the process. Most interesting is to see how their opinions and understanding evolves over the first 3 months. Take note of this. You will hopefully get to see your own team and organization through the eyes of the outside.
What is the first impressions?
What perceptions are confirmed?
What perceptions were not real?
What things were hard to uncover but really important?
People rarely take advantage of this time. It is fleeting. Once your new employee hits 90 days they are integrated and you no longer will have the new eyes and new impressions to reflect back the parts of your organization that you cant see.
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