Engineering Summer Student Onboarding

Owned by Renata Pereira Juraski
Jul 04, 2024
2 min read

Onboarding process for Engineering Summer Students.

 

I - Objective:

Generate a common approach to onboarding new summer students to squads.

II - Pre-Onboarding:

During the week prior to the new summer student boarding Engineering Manager should:

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

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

  3. set a 30 min call with all new summer students joining squad on 1st day.

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 summer student and buddies 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 summer student to the squad and promote a quick self-introduction.

  4. Add new summer student 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: a.overview of the product and its roadmap b.how do we make money with this product c.who are our main stakeholders d.walk through priority OKRs e.current state of the product (big issues, responsibilities, etc).

  7. Schedule recurrent 1:1 meetings with new summer students.

  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 summer student 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: a.Folder structure b.Business logic c.Current tech debt d.Squad specifics documentation e.How to approach your first build?

  4. Share RC Development Process a.How code is built, tested & deployed b.RC Release process (<link to handbook release process).

  5. Coordinate a 2 week schedule of pair programming with squad team members a.Recommended 1 hour/day b.Different team members to rotate.

  6. Run a buddy check-out call by end of new summer student 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: a.Get to know me b.Understand the person role and main activities c.Anything I can help with?

  3. Attend Engineering Summer Talks, where every week there should be a new presentation and debate.

  4. Attend tools and processes best practices calls.