How we onboard developers at Doctolib?

In this article, you will discover everything about the training and integration of new developers at Doctolib.

I consider myself a new developer, I arrived at Doctolib in April 2020, 4 months ago, with absolutely no knowledge of the stack: Ruby on Rails and React. Yet, I managed to pass tickets from Todo to Done in a couple of days. Want to know how? I simply followed Doctolib’s onboarding process…

Welcome on board: the Docto Academy

• What are the different teams at Doctolib?
• What is an entrepreneurial mindset?
• What is the place of Doctolib among the Healthcare Market in France and Germany?
• How is health data secured?
• How do the 1,500 Doctolibers manage to work together, while being in two different countries? What are the tools and processes that we use in our daily life?

In fact, what is Doctolib?

I know, so many questions in your mind. Guess what, during the take-off, the Docto Academy will give you all the answers you need to prepare yourself for the big adventure. 4 days of meetings with all the other new joiners (40 people on average per month!) dedicated to ensuring you are successful at Doctolib. Moreover, you will also have the chance to attend our founder Stan’s inspirational welcome speech! Something every Doctoliber has attended since the company was founded.

Wheels Up: Tech camps

Distributed among the first months of your arrival, Tech camps are tech meetings, that exist to make sure everyone can start from the same place. Advanced Security, Agile & Tech rituals, Data model, Architecture & Infrastructure, Git, Tests, Code review, Performances, DoctoCrisis, Tech Holding, Domains & Teams… All of these will no longer hold any secret from you after that!

Setup your Development Environment

Now you are ready to set your environment up!

On Doctolib’s repository, we have a lot of wikis, including one to explain how to install everything on your computer. A few scripts and commands later, Doctolib monolith app will be running on your computer locally. That’s it, you can now explore this mysterious land!

A little advice for you: if VSCode has your heart, then you can install the extension CodeTour, there are guided tours waiting for you.

Always a passenger on your side: Pair Programming

Time to meet your team!

In the beginning, pairing is a key moment for a new developer to have insights into Doctolib’s codebase and to beat the first tickets. With 2 days out of 5 working from home, you will also experience remote pair-programming and continuously keep growing from whatever place you are!

Don’t worry, no pressure on you, we don’t expect you to be autonomous at that point. Your teammates will pair with you, so you will not explore this whole new world on your own. Alone we go faster, but together we go further, right? One day, when you will feel more confident, you will take off! However, pairing remains a good process to keep, as it allows you and your partner to challenge each other and learn a lot.

Starsky & Hutch, your dedicated steward

As developers, Starsky is hardened and Hutch is trained; together, they look after flakies dealers, missing commas and Ruby thieves.

Doctolib has named a great mentoring program for you, using this famous tv show “Starsky & Hutch”.

It’s a win-win pairing between two talented people: yourself and a wiser dev. One offers experience and wisdom, the other plenty of questions and challenges.

One hour per week, this amazing duo will meet and learn from each other. In order to help them to conquer Ruby on Rails and React world, they will have a list of points to tackle:

• from Ruby on Rails basics (models, views, controllers, routes, active record…)
• passing by React (props, state, context, hooks..)
• to diverse subjects such as Performances, Security…

Until the Hutch becomes the Starsky… and migrate to Uniq app, where they will, in the future, level-up fast and easily, using a new Doctolib’s project entirely dedicated to learning.

Sharing is caring: Tech time

Not really part of the onboarding program, but I had to mention the Tech Time anyway. As you will hear a lot at Doctolib: “Sharing is caring”. Once a week out of two, all the Tech from France and Germany are invited and reunited to the Tech Time: an internal open scene meetup of an hour of tech knowledge sharing.

Every topic can be approached, from new features on Doctolib to cool tips on your favourite code editor. It is the perfect occasion to meet new faces, for others to get to know you, and of course to learn awesome things! Don’t be shy and raise your voice.

Get ready for your next flight, Doctolib is hiring!

Now you know everything! So, ready? If you want to learn, learn and learn a lot of new exciting things with more than 200 Tech people and make a difference in the Healthcare system, apply here and let’s see if there’s a match! or you can also subscribe to our weekly Tech Life newsletter here 🛬

Hope to see you soon!

Jade ☀️