
Ask HN: What is the best way to onboard new developer? - matyyyy
Hey. What is your opinion on good onboarding process? How it should look like? Do you use tools for that? What about remote teams? Best!
======
davismwfl
First, especially if you are a small team/start up, don't overthink it.

1\. Make sure their first couple of days are laid out but give them downtime
where they can just poke around and read some material, don't fill the first
few days with person after person. Fine to do that a little but provide an
outlet for them to do some discovery too.

2\. Have as much of their work area ready as possible. If you are letting them
order their own equipment that's cool, but hopefully you did that so it was
sitting ready for them on day 1. If not you are wasting both your time, but I
know it is hard sometimes too.

3\. Assign them a few tasks within the first day or two. Make them debugging
or documentation tasks or a combination of both. I like to take low hanging
fruit problems when we have them that just keep getting skipped over and hand
those to new people to get acquainted. Documenting that library or component
you had to crank out last year quickly but never got back to is also a good
thing.

4\. Ask each of them to keep a journal of things that they felt could be
better. After a few months sit with them and understand the suggestions and
implement solutions where you find patterns that are more than a personal
preference type situation.

*edit: a few words

~~~
matyyyy
Thanks! Really nice approach.

------
6nomads
Onboarding is a big deal in remote teams, we've been discussing it on Remote-
first Conference in January. I'd recommend you listening to Kaylie Boogaerts
(People & Culture Manager at LaterPay) and Liam McIvor Martin (Co-Founder at
Time Doctor): [https://6nomads.com/remote-conf](https://6nomads.com/remote-
conf)

~~~
matyyyy
Thank you

