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As a manager/lead who has personally fielded similar concerns from new hires, I understand where Rachel's frustrations come from, specifically with painful onbo

As a manager/lead who has personally fielded similar concerns from new hires, I understand where Rachel's frustrations come from, specifically with painful onboarding processes. I'm not commenting on Rachel's specific experience, but just in general for those that might feel empowered by her response; I just don't think it's generally appropriate. The process was surely designed with good intentions, perhaps by committee. And it's been designed to help those that need help. For those that don't need help, these things suck. Providing an out for new hires who don't need this handholding is problematic. You can't just make this stuff optional. You don't know what you don't know, and junior devs often think they know more than they do. Too many people would miss information they actually need. I think a senior-level engineer needs to understand this, and be able to cope with the anguish. Sometimes there are actually useful processes in place, but only useful for a select few, but because it's impossible to know who those few are, everyone must go through it. There are usually ways for anyone to affect change in an organization, but unless you've been specifically hired to make changes, you're going to have to wait a while, and even then, you may never be able to make the changes you really want. But such is life. Figure out what truly matters to you, in the long term, and you'll likely find you'll become much more influential amongst your peers, and even upper management. If you can't change the things that matter to you, don't torture yourself further; it's probably time to move on. On the flip side: if you just want to work for a smooth-running, well-oiled machine that aligns with your ideals already, good luck on your search!

munchbunny 6y ago
While I definitely agree with the "you don't know what you don't know" point, I also think there should be a healthy dose of judgement for what should be considered "mandatory up front" as opposed to "you can learn it when you need it." My last on-boarding, for example, I thought was approximately the right balance. Bootstrap the most basic credentials, set up MFA that covers 90% of your needs, get your access badge, take care of HR stuff, get walked through the HR stuff you will need to set up in the next month or so (health insurance, etc.), get handed a list of resources you will probably find useful, sit through a talk about company principles, and then you're off to meet your team where the remaining 80% of your on-boarding that is more specific to your division/team/role will happen. Your laptop will be waiting for you at your desk. I think, for example, being made to walk through exercises querying the company org chart app is superfluous, but handing you a cheat sheet that includes the URL to get to the org chart app is a great idea.
- davidmurdoch 6y ago
  My point is that the onboarding process was already designed with lots of judgement, and plenty of past experience. The process was decided upon by others who are more qualified than you, as a new hire. Until you understand more about the company, and its organizational flaws and quirks, you should refrain from criticizing some of these things. Overwatch, write these criticisms down and look at them a few weeks or months later, only then will you be able to approach these problems with the appropriate knowledge. Of course, there are places that are run by egocentric upper management that aren't qualified and won't listen... in which case my comments don't apply, but I don't think that is the norm.
  - munchbunny 6y ago
    Of course, there are places that are run by egocentric upper management that aren't qualified and won't listen... in which case my comments don't apply, but I don't think that is the norm. In my experience it's not an issue of egocentric upper management. It's an issue of a process that is 80% tuned and for various hard to solve organizational reasons it doesn't get to 90%+ tuned. For example, in my own latest onboarding about two years ago, in hindsight I definitely feel that about 1 hour of it was dubiously useful and was a political concession to someone playing visibility games, out of about 6 hours of up front orientation. I think that grade of "off for reasons but not always good ones" is the norm. It's like the event planning equivalent of that one corner of the code that makes no sense because someone bikeshedded it last year.
camgunz 6y ago
Yeah I agree with the sentiment, but if you asked me to find a dog in a company directory I’d really start to question how much you value my time. This stuff is inane.
- davidmurdoch 6y ago
  My hunch is that someone thought the dog thing was "fun","cute", or "on brand". The point likely that they need to onboard employees to their intranet; who they ask you to look up doesn't matter, and using a fictional employee may better than a real employee, as the curriculum want need to change when someone leaves, and for at least someone, using a dog was probably thought to be more fun and engaging. If using the company directory is necessary to know, then something is needed, then why not try to user something fun? really though, I think the real problem here is probably that this company doesn't really need all employees to know how to use the company directory.
  - camgunz 6y ago
    Yeah totally, and I think your earlier point about these things being designed by committee explains a lot of this. I onboarded at a place where I had to use this map of people’s desks to find certain people. Like, I can do that, but I’m never going to need to. But whatever ops manager representing their department probably thought there should be some ops thing in there, or they fought for that software and want to make sure it gets good use or whatever. I get all that, but generally what it indicates is that no one at any point (e.g. an engineering manager) said “hey this thing is intuitive enough people don’t need training on it, and culturally my people will feel condescended to”. It’s a bad signal, and borne out in Rachel’s case by the desk and equipment stuff. And while this isn’t always the case, if they can’t get small stuff like this right, what are the odds they’ll get professional development, comp, or conflict resolution right? Hiring (or training) good managers is very hard, even more so for engineering managers. But it’s so bad as an employee to have a manager that doesn’t advocate for you, good people will leave, and that’s just a downward spiral.

munchbunny 6y ago

While I definitely agree with the "you don't know what you don't know" point, I also think there should be a healthy dose of judgement for what should be considered "mandatory up front" as opposed to "you can learn it when you need it." My last on-boarding, for example, I thought was approximately the right balance. Bootstrap the most basic credentials, set up MFA that covers 90% of your needs, get your access badge, take care of HR stuff, get walked through the HR stuff you will need to set up in the next month or so (health insurance, etc.), get handed a list of resources you will probably find useful, sit through a talk about company principles, and then you're off to meet your team where the remaining 80% of your on-boarding that is more specific to your division/team/role will happen. Your laptop will be waiting for you at your desk. I think, for example, being made to walk through exercises querying the company org chart app is superfluous, but handing you a cheat sheet that includes the URL to get to the org chart app is a great idea.

davidmurdoch 6y ago
My point is that the onboarding process was already designed with lots of judgement, and plenty of past experience. The process was decided upon by others who are more qualified than you, as a new hire. Until you understand more about the company, and its organizational flaws and quirks, you should refrain from criticizing some of these things. Overwatch, write these criticisms down and look at them a few weeks or months later, only then will you be able to approach these problems with the appropriate knowledge. Of course, there are places that are run by egocentric upper management that aren't qualified and won't listen... in which case my comments don't apply, but I don't think that is the norm.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  Of course, there are places that are run by egocentric upper management that aren't qualified and won't listen... in which case my comments don't apply, but I don't think that is the norm. In my experience it's not an issue of egocentric upper management. It's an issue of a process that is 80% tuned and for various hard to solve organizational reasons it doesn't get to 90%+ tuned. For example, in my own latest onboarding about two years ago, in hindsight I definitely feel that about 1 hour of it was dubiously useful and was a political concession to someone playing visibility games, out of about 6 hours of up front orientation. I think that grade of "off for reasons but not always good ones" is the norm. It's like the event planning equivalent of that one corner of the code that makes no sense because someone bikeshedded it last year.

camgunz 6y ago

Yeah I agree with the sentiment, but if you asked me to find a dog in a company directory I’d really start to question how much you value my time. This stuff is inane.

davidmurdoch 6y ago
My hunch is that someone thought the dog thing was "fun","cute", or "on brand". The point likely that they need to onboard employees to their intranet; who they ask you to look up doesn't matter, and using a fictional employee may better than a real employee, as the curriculum want need to change when someone leaves, and for at least someone, using a dog was probably thought to be more fun and engaging. If using the company directory is necessary to know, then something is needed, then why not try to user something fun? really though, I think the real problem here is probably that this company doesn't really need all employees to know how to use the company directory.
- camgunz 6y ago
  Yeah totally, and I think your earlier point about these things being designed by committee explains a lot of this. I onboarded at a place where I had to use this map of people’s desks to find certain people. Like, I can do that, but I’m never going to need to. But whatever ops manager representing their department probably thought there should be some ops thing in there, or they fought for that software and want to make sure it gets good use or whatever. I get all that, but generally what it indicates is that no one at any point (e.g. an engineering manager) said “hey this thing is intuitive enough people don’t need training on it, and culturally my people will feel condescended to”. It’s a bad signal, and borne out in Rachel’s case by the desk and equipment stuff. And while this isn’t always the case, if they can’t get small stuff like this right, what are the odds they’ll get professional development, comp, or conflict resolution right? Hiring (or training) good managers is very hard, even more so for engineering managers. But it’s so bad as an employee to have a manager that doesn’t advocate for you, good people will leave, and that’s just a downward spiral.