4 ms·

It boggles my mind how companies do not take onboarding seriously. This is the best opportunity you have to set your people up for success, bar none. Plus, man

by donw 6y ago

It boggles my mind how companies do not take onboarding seriously. This is the best opportunity you have to set your people up for success, bar none. Plus, many of the things your company should do to build a great onboarding experience can also be leveraged to make it easy to do things like "move people between teams", "expand into a new office", and "hire great people". Done properly, this is cheap as hell.

cammil 6y ago
I don't think the incentives are there, and it's probably reasonably difficult to do well.
pedrocr 6y ago
This sounds like an example of someone taking it seriously by actually putting in the effort to build the elaborate program but then failing miserably at making it effective. That's not at all an unusual experience for HR processes in my experience. There's far too little feedback built into those kinds of processes so they rarely know if they are doing well or not.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  HR honestly have no business getting involved in hirering or onboarding. Most people working in HR aren’t qualified for it. HR should be limited to gathering enough info to ensure that you’re being paid and perhaps managing how much vacation you have left. It’s a service organisation. I had one HR drone complain about developers being bad at logging time. We told her that the system sucked and made it to hard to correctly enter your hours. She the proceede to demo how easy it was by entering her hours for the week. Basically: HR stuff = 37 hours. She had no clue that the average developer had more tasks during one day, each requirering it’s code, that she had during a full month. HR, especially in large companies, are clueless about the actual work being done. Personally I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required during the interview process I decline and leave. It always HR that require the test, never the people you’d actually work for. For onboard: The people I’ve onboarded for different companies all get the first day to settle in, setup their computer, find the coffeemaker and just look around. Day two you get a real assignment, ideally something you can fix and have in production before four o’clock. After that it’s just progressively harder tasks until you can manage on your own.
  - elric 6y ago
    > I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required during the interview process I decline and leave. I do this as well. I've had companies send me online personality tests with seriously invasive questions. With no explanations as to the purpose, no guarantees regarding data protection. Just a quick "fill this out to see if you're a match". I'm sure it's designed to carefully skirt around anything that's overtly illegal, but fuck that. They go on my shitlist.
gulfie 6y ago
They do take it seriously. It's just like the Nigerian prince scams. The insanity acts as a filter. What you get out the other side doesn't know or doesn't care that they are being misused.
- toohotatopic 6y ago
  Is this a conscious decision or an evolutionary thing where only those companies survive that happen to treat their employees like this?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
elric 6y ago
It's something I've been struggling with. It would be nice if there were a one-size-fits-all onboarding script. The company I work for has grown from 3 (founders included!) to over 30 in the time I've been there. When you're tiny, and someone new joins, there's no need for formal onboarding, osmosis sort of does its thing. This worked reasonably well until we reached ~10 butts in seats. Unfortunately, this 10 people mark was also where pressure started to ramp up. More customers, tighter deadlines, bigger workloads, and a struggle to survive -- because at this point the first round of financing was spent, and we needed to prove our worth to future investors. Everyone was stressed and overworked. Basically, there was no time for onboarding. Which is stupid, because it's an activity that pays dividends in the sort-of-short term. Once we reached the 30 people mark, we were able to breathe a little easier in regards to workload. We're still growing. Onboarding is starting to become a thing. Where things aren't automated, they're being documented. We at least try to make time for introductions. It's far from perfect. It needs to improve. But it's hard. And I should probably take a moment to apologize to hire ten through thirty for what must have been a shitty first few months for them.
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  I will repeat from another point of view: when you were 10 we had enough workload for 15 but we didn't get the extra 5 until we got to the "need 20" (or whatever number). So you have always been overworked and overworking your staff and you preferred that they all work on 120-140% instead of 80-90% that would give space for better quality. I get it that numbers are ruthless, but workload, quality, documentation (not speaking only about onboarding documentation) etc. also got "numbers" on them if one cares to measure. It is only the £€¥$ numbers matter.
  - elric 6y ago
    Oh yes you're absolutely right. And while I'm only an engineer and have no "real" say in how the company is run, and no remuneration except for my monthly paycheck, I've definitely been part of the problem. I work crazy hours, I'm totally addicted to the problem-solution "high" feedback loop. There have definitely been times when I've thought some people weren't pulling their weight. But with the passage of time, I've mellowed a bit and I've come to realize the importance of downtime and all those hard to quantify things. For the most part, my employer has treated people pretty well. Workload has been high, but flexibility has always been high as well. Along with $$$. Working here has definitely given me an appreciation for the hard work it takes to get a company off the ground.

by donw 6y ago

cammil 6y ago

I don't think the incentives are there, and it's probably reasonably difficult to do well.

pedrocr 6y ago

This sounds like an example of someone taking it seriously by actually putting in the effort to build the elaborate program but then failing miserably at making it effective. That's not at all an unusual experience for HR processes in my experience. There's far too little feedback built into those kinds of processes so they rarely know if they are doing well or not.

mrweasel 6y ago
HR honestly have no business getting involved in hirering or onboarding. Most people working in HR aren’t qualified for it. HR should be limited to gathering enough info to ensure that you’re being paid and perhaps managing how much vacation you have left. It’s a service organisation. I had one HR drone complain about developers being bad at logging time. We told her that the system sucked and made it to hard to correctly enter your hours. She the proceede to demo how easy it was by entering her hours for the week. Basically: HR stuff = 37 hours. She had no clue that the average developer had more tasks during one day, each requirering it’s code, that she had during a full month. HR, especially in large companies, are clueless about the actual work being done. Personally I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required during the interview process I decline and leave. It always HR that require the test, never the people you’d actually work for. For onboard: The people I’ve onboarded for different companies all get the first day to settle in, setup their computer, find the coffeemaker and just look around. Day two you get a real assignment, ideally something you can fix and have in production before four o’clock. After that it’s just progressively harder tasks until you can manage on your own.
- elric 6y ago
  > I no longer participate in personality test. If one is required during the interview process I decline and leave. I do this as well. I've had companies send me online personality tests with seriously invasive questions. With no explanations as to the purpose, no guarantees regarding data protection. Just a quick "fill this out to see if you're a match". I'm sure it's designed to carefully skirt around anything that's overtly illegal, but fuck that. They go on my shitlist.

gulfie 6y ago

They do take it seriously. It's just like the Nigerian prince scams. The insanity acts as a filter. What you get out the other side doesn't know or doesn't care that they are being misused.

toohotatopic 6y ago
Is this a conscious decision or an evolutionary thing where only those companies survive that happen to treat their employees like this?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

elric 6y ago

It's something I've been struggling with. It would be nice if there were a one-size-fits-all onboarding script. The company I work for has grown from 3 (founders included!) to over 30 in the time I've been there. When you're tiny, and someone new joins, there's no need for formal onboarding, osmosis sort of does its thing. This worked reasonably well until we reached ~10 butts in seats. Unfortunately, this 10 people mark was also where pressure started to ramp up. More customers, tighter deadlines, bigger workloads, and a struggle to survive -- because at this point the first round of financing was spent, and we needed to prove our worth to future investors. Everyone was stressed and overworked. Basically, there was no time for onboarding. Which is stupid, because it's an activity that pays dividends in the sort-of-short term. Once we reached the 30 people mark, we were able to breathe a little easier in regards to workload. We're still growing. Onboarding is starting to become a thing. Where things aren't automated, they're being documented. We at least try to make time for introductions. It's far from perfect. It needs to improve. But it's hard. And I should probably take a moment to apologize to hire ten through thirty for what must have been a shitty first few months for them.

HenryBemis 6y ago
I will repeat from another point of view: when you were 10 we had enough workload for 15 but we didn't get the extra 5 until we got to the "need 20" (or whatever number). So you have always been overworked and overworking your staff and you preferred that they all work on 120-140% instead of 80-90% that would give space for better quality. I get it that numbers are ruthless, but workload, quality, documentation (not speaking only about onboarding documentation) etc. also got "numbers" on them if one cares to measure. It is only the £€¥$ numbers matter.
- elric 6y ago
  Oh yes you're absolutely right. And while I'm only an engineer and have no "real" say in how the company is run, and no remuneration except for my monthly paycheck, I've definitely been part of the problem. I work crazy hours, I'm totally addicted to the problem-solution "high" feedback loop. There have definitely been times when I've thought some people weren't pulling their weight. But with the passage of time, I've mellowed a bit and I've come to realize the importance of downtime and all those hard to quantify things. For the most part, my employer has treated people pretty well. Workload has been high, but flexibility has always been high as well. Along with $$$. Working here has definitely given me an appreciation for the hard work it takes to get a company off the ground.