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I have never worked at a company with a functional onboarding process; are there any examples/anecdotes of onboarding processes that worked well?

by rf15 3y ago

ethanbond 3y ago
Anecdotally, Palantir’s was fantastic the multiple times I did it (internships + FTE). Facebook’s was one of the most insulting corporate experiences I’ve had. Multiple speakers for the (very long, exhausting days of lectures) straight up didn’t show up. No comms/reschedule, just the entire onboarding class sitting and waiting for an hour.
joshSzep 3y ago
I recall Yelp's onboarding to be the best I've encountered anywhere. Some highlights: - Before Day 1 I received a pleasant email on my personal account that walked me through Day 1: simple things like getting a badge, finding my team, etc was stress free as a result. - There was a "space camp" presentation to give me a high level overview of the technology and culture, as well as step by step instructions guiding me through my first commit and first deployment (both of which are expected within the first week) - I was assigned a dedicated mentor on my team. I'm someone who often wants to "figure it out" on my own as a response to my "asking for help" anxiety. Having someone assigned to answer my questions and who micro managed me through the first couple weeks (in a good way) really helped me get up to speed much faster. - Always a (expensed) team lunch to welcome in a new hire. Anyways, I'm now in the "remote till I die" camp and I have been struggling to translate this into a remote first company. It can be challenging to make a new remote team member feel comfortable, productive, and "safe" without that physical presence.
PheonixPharts 3y ago
My experience is that the best onboarding processes (at least for devs) basically boil down to getting you to have a real PR merged by the end of the first week. The period could be longer for more complex orgs, but the time from logging in to first merged PR can be consider the metric to measure the success of your onboarding. Basically: 1. Here's how to get the dev environment setup locally. 2. Here's your first task. 3. Here's the people that will be most helpful in solving that task. Once you can submit a PR and have code review (and ideally have it merged), you're effectively onboarded. After this it's time start worrying about the culture/philosophy/meeting people/etc. Needless to say (hopefully), the new hire should not feel pressure to get a PR up quickly, the process and guidance should be set up for success.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > My experience is that the best onboarding processes (at least for devs) basically boil down to getting you to have a real PR merged by the end of the first week. But then when will we have time for all the DEI training if we waste the first week getting the employee productive?
  - toast0 3y ago
    Some things are important to do in the first week, like anti-corrupt practices act compliance, and compliance for any consent decrees currently in place. DEI and anti-bias can wait for week two.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
It's worked well for me at small, well-funded startups. It also worked well for me at large, stable organizations. I.e., more initial bureaucracy, but it was a pretty refined process. Fast-growing companies above a certain size are where I've had the most hiccups. Having a well-chosen onboarding buddy also makes a huge difference IME.

I have never worked at a company with a functional onboarding process; are there any examples/anecdotes of onboarding processes that worked well?

by rf15 3y ago

I have never worked at a company with a functional onboarding process; are there any examples/anecdotes of onboarding processes that worked well?

ethanbond 3y ago

Anecdotally, Palantir’s was fantastic the multiple times I did it (internships + FTE). Facebook’s was one of the most insulting corporate experiences I’ve had. Multiple speakers for the (very long, exhausting days of lectures) straight up didn’t show up. No comms/reschedule, just the entire onboarding class sitting and waiting for an hour.

joshSzep 3y ago

I recall Yelp's onboarding to be the best I've encountered anywhere. Some highlights: - Before Day 1 I received a pleasant email on my personal account that walked me through Day 1: simple things like getting a badge, finding my team, etc was stress free as a result. - There was a "space camp" presentation to give me a high level overview of the technology and culture, as well as step by step instructions guiding me through my first commit and first deployment (both of which are expected within the first week) - I was assigned a dedicated mentor on my team. I'm someone who often wants to "figure it out" on my own as a response to my "asking for help" anxiety. Having someone assigned to answer my questions and who micro managed me through the first couple weeks (in a good way) really helped me get up to speed much faster. - Always a (expensed) team lunch to welcome in a new hire. Anyways, I'm now in the "remote till I die" camp and I have been struggling to translate this into a remote first company. It can be challenging to make a new remote team member feel comfortable, productive, and "safe" without that physical presence.

PheonixPharts 3y ago

My experience is that the best onboarding processes (at least for devs) basically boil down to getting you to have a real PR merged by the end of the first week. The period could be longer for more complex orgs, but the time from logging in to first merged PR can be consider the metric to measure the success of your onboarding. Basically: 1. Here's how to get the dev environment setup locally. 2. Here's your first task. 3. Here's the people that will be most helpful in solving that task. Once you can submit a PR and have code review (and ideally have it merged), you're effectively onboarded. After this it's time start worrying about the culture/philosophy/meeting people/etc. Needless to say (hopefully), the new hire should not feel pressure to get a PR up quickly, the process and guidance should be set up for success.

lelanthran 3y ago
> My experience is that the best onboarding processes (at least for devs) basically boil down to getting you to have a real PR merged by the end of the first week. But then when will we have time for all the DEI training if we waste the first week getting the employee productive?
- toast0 3y ago
  Some things are important to do in the first week, like anti-corrupt practices act compliance, and compliance for any consent decrees currently in place. DEI and anti-bias can wait for week two.

CoastalCoder 3y ago

It's worked well for me at small, well-funded startups. It also worked well for me at large, stable organizations. I.e., more initial bureaucracy, but it was a pretty refined process. Fast-growing companies above a certain size are where I've had the most hiccups. Having a well-chosen onboarding buddy also makes a huge difference IME.