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One of the most valuable things you can do during onboarding is update/write documentation. Many places have out of date documentation — you should correct or
by __turbobrew__ 4y ago
One of the most valuable things you can do during onboarding is update/write documentation.
Many places have out of date documentation — you should correct or update that information as you go through your first few months. This generates real value for the company/team and helps solidify your understanding of how things work. You can also form useful contacts since you may need to seek out the institutional knowledge from senior employees in order to form this documentation.
- mikebenfield 4y ago> Many places have out of date documentation — you should correct or update that information as you go through your first few months. Expecting the newest member to update the docs seems to be pretty common but has always struck me as pathological. The person with the worst understanding and least perspective is the one who's expected to teach it to others.
- stavros 4y agoBut the person with the most "beginner's mind".
- __turbobrew__ 4y agoA lot of documentation is rote. For example new hires usually follow a “getting your dev environment setup” guide which can have small errors or issues. Simply updating the guide to reflect new undocumented processes is a simple thing that brings value and does not require in depth experience. In my mind this is just an extension of good software engineering practices: if your system has a bug or error which requires development time to fix you should find and fix the root cause of the error. Similarly if you are onboarding and you are blocked by undocumented processes you should go out of your way to find out the root cause of the issue and fix it for future developers.