Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

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Agreed. The over-engineered onboarding process can become frustrating if it starts to diverge too much from real day-to-day life at the company.

It can also be disappointing to go through a multi-week onboarding full of outings and lunches and fun activities, only to discover that the real job is nothing like the onboarding. Then you have to learn how to actually do the job after the onboarding.

IMO, the best onboarding strategies give the current employees and the new hire some room to get to know each other naturally, without forcing it into overly structured activities. For example, giving the whole team a budget to go out to a long lunch with the hire 3 days per week on the first 2 weeks.

Unless you have a team of lone-wolf type or antisocial developers, usually the person's peers have a better idea of how to onboard a person than a manager several steps removed. Or worse, a person in HR trying to imagine what a good onboarding activity looks like for engineers.

From my experience onboarding means showing you where the bathroom is, giving you credentials for your new emial account, pointing you to a company wiki and introducing you to your new team and then you are at the mercy of your team to "get you up to speed". Stories of some fun activities sound like some sort of novelty to me.

I've switched employer and been through the "fun activities" recently. All remote though, because COVID. Two weeks of online lectures and "icebreaker" activities. It was a weird experience, and I think the actual, useful information could have been condensed in a single day, instead of two weeks.

The actual, useful onboarding, was mostly me asking my colleagues where to find the things I needed to find. I can program, I can learn what I need to learn, I just need some good pointers and for my teammates to be patient, supportive and understanding.

Any icebreakers you liked?

I run a fully remote team and am always looking for ways to make a new member feel comfortable, and the existing team comfortable with the new person... or at least less-awkward.

Also, anything to specifically avoid?

My experience with smaller companies is that's very true, and you're often on a team of 1.

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