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GETTING UP TO SPEED:

onboarding strategies for successful teams

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IT’S YOUR FIRST DAY…

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HELLO!

I’m Nicole Tibaldi.

Senior Engineering Manager @ The New York Times

I’ve onboarded lots of engineers

and joined many new companies myself.

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COMPANY

What do we build?

What are the other functions?

What is the company’s history?

ENGINEERING ORG

How is eng structured?

What general principles or practices are in place?

What resources are available?

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TEAM

Who is on my team?

How do we work?

How do we support the company?

MANAGER RELATIONSHIP

What is expected of someone in my role?

What does my manager need to know about me?

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THE COMPANY

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WELCOME TO THE COMPANY

  • Account setup for basic needs (Slack, email) as well as engineering-specific accounts (GitHub, PagerDuty)
  • Company documentation (internal wiki or similar)
  • How to request additional equipment
  • Enrollment in payroll and insurance

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ABOUT THE COMPANY CULTURE

  • Company values
  • Mechanisms for meeting folks outside of the new joiner’s direct team
  • Internal groups or activities that employees can join
  • Pertinent information about the office or remote/hybrid culture

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HOW THE COMPANY WORKS

  • Full scope of the major products or services
  • Overall org structure and different disciplines (Engineering, customer support, legal, sales, marketing, etc)
  • Company’s goals or OKRs
  • Significant company history (pivots, big funding rounds, org changes, etc)

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THE ENGINEERING ORG

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WELCOME TO ENGINEERING

  • Organizational structure and any logic behind it (Do teams organize by product, discipline, or something else?)
  • Key people in the engineering organization
  • Values or principles that are applied to engineering as a whole
  • Engineering-wide initiatives

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WHAT RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE?

  • How to find documentation, decision records, etc
  • Ways to connect with other engineers across the company
  • Formal or informal mentorship programs

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THE TEAM

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WELCOME TO THE TEAM

  • Demo of products/services the team works on
  • Team’s mission or mandate, and any current goals or OKRs
  • Names and titles of the other engineers and cross-functional partners
  • Individual 1:1s

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HOW THE TEAM OPERATES

  • Meetings or ceremonies that occur on a regular cadence
  • Tools and processes the team uses to generate and track work
  • Team norms around scheduling, working hours, Slack, and email

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GETTING STARTED IN CODE

  • High-level overview of the code base’s functionality and business logic
  • Best practices: style, testing strategy, lint rules, code reviews, etc
  • Recommended resources for learning about specific tools or frameworks

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MANAGER RELATIONSHIP

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SETTING EXPECTATIONS

  • General areas of focus each week, especially in the beginning
  • Milestones - often 30, 60, and 90 days
  • Career ladder and role expectations

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UNDERSTANDING THE PERSON

  • 1:1 structure
  • Communication and feedback preferences
  • Long-term career goals

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GENERAL PRINCIPLES

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Make expectations clear

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Don’t make assumptions

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Provide reference materials

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Go broad, then deep

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Onboarding is an investment…

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…and investments build value over time

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THANKS!

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@nicoletibaldi

www.nicole-tibaldi.me

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