What great onboarding looks like in a new dev job

Starting a new job as a software developer means going through the more or less complicated chore of setting up your computer environment.

At the same time, you want to maintain the energy and excitement from joining a new company. Balancing these two aspects isn't always straightforward.

I'm currently going through the onboarding process for a new job, and this has made me reflect on the different experiences I have had throughout my career.

Some have been really good. 👍
Others not quite so. 😣

Every company has of course been shaped by different circumstances along their journey. This naturally makes the onboarding experience different from place to place.

There are few things that builds as much energy and excitement as having an impact on the production system (or equivalent) on your first day.

That should be the goal whenever possible.

To get there, I have seen two approaches work particularly well:

🎂 Getting the environment up and running is super easy

Either from being simple (not all systems need to use every technology in the world simultaneously), or from a thoughtful investment in developer tooling.

Ideally it should take somewhere around an hour to get everything running. The entire process should be automated with clear documentation.

You can then have everything in place before lunch and participate in the development team as a driver, on your own computer, already in the afternoon. That creates real momentum!

For practical reasons that might not always be possible, but it is always something to strive towards.

🗺️ Join a pair or ensemble as a non-driving participant

By not being the driver you miss some hands-on experience initially. However, as an inexperience navigator you can fall back to asking questions and really reflect on what is happening around you.

Continue like this and invest some spare time each day, perhaps even a full day or two during your second week, to get your system up and running properly.

You can then eventually transition to participating as a driver too, slightly later but with better understanding of the system architecture and workflows.

My best experiences have been with more or less automated, yet quite complicated, systems. This obviously required a bit of investment from the company, but it also pays off after a few onboarded colleagues. 💪

My most frustrating onboarding? When I had to first upgrade the entire system to be able to even run it on a modern computer. That took around three months... 🫠