005. Onboarding
An employee's first day of working for you determines how engaged they feel every day afterwards.
This is especially true for software developers. An engaged developer finds pride in their mission, helps out their teammates, and wants to go the extra mile to produce high-quality work. A disengaged developer... doesn't.
The onboarding experience is a highly underrated yet vital part of building a strong technical team. Not only does it determine how a new team member feels about working for you, but how they approach every other position they'll hold in the future — especially if it's early in their career.
A great first day can demonstrate culture and good habits that successful teams aspire to achieve every day afterwards. Here's how to make day one amazing.
Your Developer is Your Customer
You've hired them to join the company, now you need to sell them on joining your team.
Day one sets the tone. Go out of your way to ensure your new teammate is getting the guidance they need, either from yourself or from one or two assigned team members.
It doesn't matter how comprehensive you think your team documentation is (and it should be!) — speaking from experience as both a hirer and hire-ee, your team docs are going to be hard to find and hard to read on day one.
Why? Because starting at a new company means a lot of tasks and information coming your way right off the bat. HR will want forms filled out, there will be accounts to sign up for, preferences to set, new machines to set up, and (hopefully) a flurry of chat messages coming in saying, "Welcome to the team!" All this means that some leisurely day-one downtime for finding and browsing your team docs isn't going to happen.
There's no replacement, on that hectic first day, for a real human guide. Your new teammate needs someone available to answer questions, send links, and point to where vital tribal knowledge is stored. Ensure you're serving one of your most important customers today.
Time Block
In the blitz of things to do, time passes quickly on day one. If you don't block out specific windows of time, there won't be enough hours in the day to accomplish vital tasks.
To allot time blocks to necessary tasks means you'll have to know how long they take. If you've been in your position for a while, re-familiarize yourself with the current onboarding processes. Ask HR for the forms a new hire needs to fill out. Try and set up new accounts and multi-factor authentication to see what the process entails. Understanding what a new hire goes through can help you anticipate possible pitfalls and triage what needs doing on day one.
Set up time blocks for the absolutely-necessary stuff, then don't let them bleed into one another. If you hit a block and can't complete a task within the allotted time, you — as the leader — have messed up somewhere. Don't degrade your new hire's first day trying to fix it on the spot. Move on and solve it later.
Deploy on Day One
Your foremost goal for your new teammate should be to deploy on day one.
There's a lot wrapped up in that sentence. To make this possible, you and your team need to have all your ducks in a row. How long does it take your team to deploy? Are you practicing continuous deployment? Is your code review process solid (does it exist?)? Do you have automation set up for things like integration tests, pipelines, security testing, etc? If the idea of a new hire deploying on day one seems worlds away to you, this is a great goal to set your sights on. Start getting those processes up to speed.
A new teammate who can deploy on their first day is a sold teammate. Not only is everything in place for them to start working on issues tomorrow, but they've already, on their first day, materially contributed to your product. What a sense of accomplishment, of being part of the team. Guaranteed, they’ll be sufficiently impressed to be telling a loved one today, "My code is live in the app right now!" That's an achievement worth celebrating.
Take it to work today:
Treat your new teammate as you would treat your most important customer today. Assign them a buddy (or two) and ensure they have the guidance they need.
Time block the day to ensure the most necessary tasks get done. Stick to your schedule.
Deploy on day one.