Dev Onboarding at Equinox Media
Onboarding as a new software developer at any company can be a daunting task. In addition to getting into the flow of work with your new teammates and managers, setting up your development environment and wrapping your head around best practices, you need to first and foremost familiarize yourself with the codebase. At Equinox Media, we have adopted an approach that has expedited the time a new hire takes to become an independent contributor, while ensuring they have multiple points of contact when they encounter roadblocks or have questions. Although we are constantly evolving our processes, I wanted to detail our approach to acclimating new teammates in its current form.
First Day
On a new developer’s first day, they have introductory meetings with their manager, begin to meet their squad teammates, and begin configuring their computer and setting up their development environment. Notably, they also are paired with a peer as a first point of contact for any questions that arise along the way. We have found this to be quite effective at giving the new team member a friendly name and face to reach out to as they begin to acclimate. This has also helped to increase camaraderie between teammates in a remote work world. Having someone in a similar role to reach out to as you get up to speed has been instrumental in making the process quicker, but also in identifying ways to mitigate pain points for future hires.
First Sprint
Once the developer has successfully gotten the app to build in their local development environment, they are given a high level walkthrough of the codebase. This covers things like the organizational structure, as well as identifying some components, routes or queries that serve as better examples than some others, and answering any questions the developer has.
After they are fully set up, we don’t ask them to immediately jump into contributing. Instead, we have created a series of tickets for the new hire to work through at their own pace, directly modifying the codebase as they work through common requests such as interacting with navigation, implementing analytics, creating a new component or interfacing with the backend or mocked data environment. Even though we allow people to work at their own pace, we find people move through the onboarding tasks quickly and when they take on their first real ticket are much more comfortable than if they just jumped in. In addition to “learning by doing,” these tasks are crucial for the developer’s understanding of a few things:
- Our Agile development process (Scrum, issue tracking and the various Scrum ceremonies)
- Our tooling and software stack (CI/CD, Crash Reporting, Analytics, etc.)
- Our Code Review Process (fast-forward merging, our automated testing suite, common code change requests, the feedback-approval process, etc.)
Additionally, in the code review process our teammates are able to gently point the new developer towards our best practices in a way that does not put any work that will be shipped at risk, or unnecessary pressure on a new independent contributor to get up to speed overnight. As they work through the tickets, they gain exposure to the majority of the common implementation requests we get and ease more gradually into a part of the larger team. By giving the new team member a peer as a first point of contact, we both increase approachability, expand the person’s direct contact with their peers outside of their squad, and remove potential friction in the onboarding process.
By the time the onboarding tasks are completed, the developer can feel confident in their ability to contribute, plus is familiarized in-depth with our day to day processes and methodology. We have found the shift from onboarding to contributing has gotten easier with each iteration of this process, as we improve the onboarding tasks and other components to starting a new role at a new company.
As we continue to grow, we will continue to improve this process. Apply today to see for yourself!
