
Ask HN: How has virtual onboarding been? - daveed
I&#x27;m guessing that some companies have still been hiring.  If you&#x27;ve started recently at a company that wasn&#x27;t previously remote, how has your onboarding process been?  I&#x27;m really curious.
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ElPsyCongroo
I was onboarded virtually as a junior software engineer in April. They
basically scheduled Zoom meetings with key people across the first week to
help me understand their processes. After that, they assigned me my tasks and
I was on my own.

It definitely feels tougher to approach someone on Slack for help. You can't
tell whether someone's busy or not when deciding if you should interrupt them.
You can't read facial cues. The tone of texts can easily be misinterpreted. If
they miss your message and reply a few hours later/don't reply, you can't help
but wonder if they dislike you. Zoom has that 40 minute time limit which makes
meetings feel rushed because it's a bother to restart so I feel that people
are reluctant to use it if it's not urgent.

I think this paints a picture of a toxic work environment but it definitely is
not. This is just a product of a company and myself trying to adapt to
unprecedented circumstances and I'm sure it will improve in the future.

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utsav91292
I was on-boarded virtually as Lead Engineer in April. They started with WebEx
meetings scheduled for a couple of days and after that I was on my own. I
missed the human touch that joining a new company has. Apart from that, it was
pretty smooth.

