Engineering Onboarding

Onboarding process specific for Engineering teams.

I - Objective:

Generate a common approach to onboarding new team members to squads.

II - Pre-Onboarding:

During the week prior to the new team member's first day, the Engineering Manager should:

  1. Notify the squad on its main channel (onboarding date, name and job role)

  2. Assign an engineer from the squad to become a Buddy for assistance and questions

  3. Set a 30 min welcome meeting

  4. Set a 1st-week check-in by end of the week

III - Onboarding - Roles & Responsibilities

Engineering Manager should:

  1. Guarantee new team member attends Rocket.Chat onboarding 1-week process

  2. Conduct welcome meeting with new rocketee and buddy to share general details about squad, engineer focal contacts, squad meetings to be attended, mention the different RC onboarding activities and share short term expectations

  3. Introduce new team member to the squad and promote a quick self-introduction

  4. Add new team member to all relevant squad channels and meetings

  5. Provide access to the repos & other relevant links (private repos, private handbook, private documentation, etc)

  6. Share below topics at 1st week check-in:

    • overview of the product and its roadmap

    • how do we make money with this product

    • who are our main stakeholders

    • walk through priority OKRs

    • current state of the product (big issues, responsibilities, etc)

  7. Schedule recurrent 1:1 meetings with new team member

  8. Set all onboarding related tasks on click up, assigning the new member and buddy

  9. Grant 30 All Start Points to Buddy at end of onboarding

Buddy should:

  1. Add new team member to the role-specific meetings and channels (triage, design, chapter, etc)

  2. Share useful links: Clickup' sprints, backlogs, repos, roadmap, etc

  3. Share codebase overview

    • Folder structure

    • Business logic

    • Current tech debt

    • Squad specifics documentation

    • How to approach your first build?

  4. Share Development Process

  5. Coordinate a 2-week schedule of pair programming

    • Recommended 1 hour/day

    • Different team members to rotate

  6. Run a buddy check-out call by end of new team member 1st month to validate knowledge transfer

New Team Member should:

  1. Complete Rocket.Chat onboarding certification process in training.rocket.chat

  2. Schedule 1:1s with main squad members (product manager, tech lead, chapter focal and others that might be applicable). Recommended agenda:

    • Get to know me

    • Understand the person role and main activities

    • Anything I can help with?

IV-Onboarding at a glance