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Discussion on: Any tips for onboarding developers? Let us know for the chance to be featured on a DEV podcast!

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Jonathan Yeong

I think the goal of onboarding is to provide context. Any dev coming onto a new project doesn't know the history of the project, the decisions made, or the architecture. A good onboarding will provide info on all of these.

The actual process could vary depending on the level of the developer. A senior developer may be fine with a few diagrams and documentation. But an early in career developer might need some more hands on onboarding e.g. through pairing or knowledge sharing. The onboarding process should accommodate both of these options!

Good onboarding experiences for me have been:

  • Onboarding steps documented and up to date.
  • Automating things like permissions to projects.
  • Culture doc for things like meeting expectations, fun events, or slack channels to join.

Finally, a good onboarding process should have continual check in's. Either through an onboarding buddy or through your team. When I first started as a developer, I didn't ask questions because I was worried about disrupting others. This caused me lots of pain and slowed down my onboarding.

Making a safe space for someone onboarding to ask questions is really important. And we want to give developers the time to soak in all the new information.