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Successfully Onboarding a Junior Engineer in Three Steps

Emily Giurleo • RailsConf 2020.2 Couch Edition

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The Players

You�Manager or mentor of new engineer

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Your Team�Working closely with new engineer

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Junior Engineer�New member of your team!

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The Goals

Enable autonomy�Make the new engineer productive

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Build confidence�Make the new engineer believe in themselves

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Develop trust�Make the new engineer believe in you

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The Steps

You

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Your Team

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Junior Engineer

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Players

Enable autonomy

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Build confidence

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Develop trust

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Goals

Steps

1. Set Expectations

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2. Deliver Feedback

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3. Assess Performance

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Step I:

Set Expectations

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Set your own expectations

  • Make a three-month road map
  • Re-read their resume. What will they have to learn?

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Set your team’s expectations

  • Who is going to teach the new engineer what they need to know?
  • How much time should they spend doing that?

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Set new hire’s expectations

  • Share your three month road map
  • Let them express ideas and preferences
  • Tell them who they should go to with questions

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The Goals

Enable autonomy�Make the new engineer productive

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Build confidence�Make the new engineer believe in themselves

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Develop trust�Make the new engineer believe in you

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Step 2:

Deliver Feedback

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Normalize feedback on your team

  • This is its own talk 🙃
  • Warning signs:
    • Reacting defensively to feedback
    • Talking behind each other’s backs
    • Certain teammates are exempt from criticism

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Give feedback to the junior engineer

  • How to give feedback
  • What to give feedback on
  • When to give feedback

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How to give feedback

Example: Junior engineer pushes directly to master instead of creating a pull request.

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  • Be specific: I noticed you pushed directly to master instead of creating a pull request.
  • Focus on impact: This prevents the rest of the team from being able to catch bugs in your code.

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How to give feedback

  • Ask questions: Why did you do that?
  • Redefine expectations: In the future, I expect you to create a pull request for every change you make to the code.
  • Give them a chance to fix it: Walk me through the code you merged and make a pull request with changes.

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How to give feedback

  • Be specific
  • Focus on impact
  • Ask questions
  • Redefine expectations
  • Give them a chance to fix it

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What to give feedback on

  • Everything 🙀
  • Give positive feedback for technical work done well
  • Reward engineers for valuable non-technical work

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When to give feedback

  • During regularly-scheduled 1-on-1’s
  • Also not during regularly-scheduled 1-on-1’s

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“You’d never let the fact that you go to the dentist for a cleaning a couple times a year prevent you from brushing your teeth every day.”

-- Radical Candor by Kim Scott

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Get feedback in return

  • Giving feedback will reveal holes in your process
  • Don’t. Get. Defensive.
  • Use this feedback to make onboarding better

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The Goals

Enable autonomy�Make the new engineer productive

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​

Build confidence�Make the new engineer believe in themselves

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​

Develop trust�Make the new engineer believe in you

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Step 3:

Assess Performance

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Get on the same page

  • Make sure the team agrees on what constitutes good work performance
  • e.g. Agree on a list of criteria for promotion

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Give a performance review

  • The contents of this review should not surprise you
  • If the junior engineer is performing well, reward them with a raise or promotion

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Assess your own performance

  • If the new engineer’s performance review was a surprise to you, you probably did something wrong
  • Collect feedback from the new engineer and your team to improve the onboarding process

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The Goals

Enable autonomy�Make the new engineer productive

​

​

Build confidence�Make the new engineer believe in themselves

​

​

Develop trust�Make the new engineer believe in you

​

​

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Overview

You

​

​

Your Team

​

​

Junior Engineer

​

​

Players

Enable autonomy

​

​

Build confidence

​

​

Develop trust

​

​

Goals

Steps

1. Set Expectations

​

​

2. Deliver Feedback

​

​

​

3. Assess Performance

​

​

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Why does this matter?

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Successfully onboarding a junior engineer in three steps:

  1. Enable autonomy by setting expectations
  2. Build confidence by giving feedback
  3. Develop trust by rewarding good performance

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@EmilyGiurleo • emilygiurleo.dev