
Why MailChimp Doesn’t Let New Hires Work for Their First Week on the Job - dpflan
https://www.fastcompany.com/40433689/why-mailchimp-doesnt-let-new-hires-work-for-their-first-week-on-the-job
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db48x
Sounds like a dreadful place to work. You have to meet a bunch of people from
over a dozen different departments, who you'll never talk to again?
Meaningless mottoes and personality tests? A scavenger hunt?! All that crap
before you even touch a computer?

Count me out. The information I need to start a job can be written on one side
of a single sheet of paper.

~~~
mjmasn
Just on your personality test point, the Birkman Assessment mentioned in the
article is absolutely the pinnacle of personality assessment. It's not like
the meaningless toy tests like MBTI/Hogan/16pf you may have experienced
before. It covers the usual motivation and behaviour pieces but it is unique
in surfacing the underlying needs and stress reactions which often have no
correlation to your visible 'normal' behaviour that other people see. Really
helpful in determining your approach to different members of the team as well
as giving you the common language to explain your needs to other people. In
short it's both insightful and actionable for you and your team members in
your personal and professional life. Plus it's stable over time, so you take
the assessment once and have 20+ years of value from it.

Disclaimer: I work for a company that uses the Birkman Assessment but no
relation to MailChimp other than as a user of their newsletter services.

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toomuchtodo
This is ridiculously refreshing compared to the posts I see where you're
committing and pushing code to prod on your first day.

Kudos Mailchimp!

EDIT: Lots of sibling posts raining on their parade; if you're not interested
in the culture and business as a whole, maybe consult instead?

~~~
technion
I think that can be aimed at solving a different problem to the one
superficially described.

I've seen places that take 4-5 weeks for a sysadmin to assist a developer
through how to get a development environment going. That is to say, I've been
a sysadmin in a place that chose that approach.

Putting the work in with containers or vagrant and a reasonable CI and
workflow that just lets people get in front of the codebase and change
something is an incredible Godsend and I hope to always have that approach in
future. Whether someone actually pushes a fix for something that day should be
a side issue.

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caleblloyd
If a new hire isn't into hand holding and kumbaya, do they have an option to
skip straight to getting real work done?

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Denzel
I think it'd be better for them to find another place to work. Not every
employer-employee relationship is meant to be.

Mailchimp believes onboarding is company-critical. And their turnover rate
speaks for itself.

There are plenty of other places to work.

~~~
db48x
But is the turnover rate caused by making all new employees sit through a week
of inane meetings? Their turnover rate sounds amazing so they're obviously
doing something right, but its hard to see how this would account for it.

~~~
Denzel
What's "inane" (defined as: silly, stupid) about these meetings?

Be specific, because I'm curious.

~~~
db48x
scavenger hunt (around the office—just for fun!)

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OpenDrapery
Kudos to the company for taking onboarding seriously. Most places are abysmal
at it. But then again, I've recently been working at places that leverage a
lot of contractors/consultants to get work done. The attitude seems to be,
"why bother giving them context? They are just here to labor and then be
gone."

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mc32
Is, this that revolutionary? I'm pretty sure a few companies out there in tech
give you a week or two of training before you get any assignments?

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Denzel
Yes, it really is special. As you said, a few companies in tech do it. And
they have a tremendous advantage.

My overwhelming experience at companies ranging from small $1-5MM revenue
shops to >$100MM startups has shown onboarding to be an ad-hoc afterthought.
No conscious design.

Many of these companies don't understand how much it's hurting them.

As I've grown more senior, I've learned to onboard myself... seeking out
knowledgeable individuals and teasing out the _big picture_. This is not the
default for more junior developers. And thus they lag like an unspun turbo,
whining as they try to spin up.

To have full-spectrum -- internal- and external-faced -- onboarding baked into
the company culture is a tremendous advantage. It promotes a clear, razor-
sharp, global context that allows individuals to move faster with greater
alignment.

I love what MailChimp is doing.

~~~
db48x
You're not wrong, but a well-designed process for welcoming new employees to
the company doesn't have to be a dog-and-pony show, or a week of meetings, or
a nightmare specifically designed to torture introverts.

~~~
Denzel
I'm open to hearing detailed alternatives.

Company architecture -- specifically, ensuring autonomous strategic alignment
while minimizing synchronous communication -- is close to my heart.

It'd be especially helpful to hear how to do this is in a way that's
comfortable and welcoming to someone like you.

~~~
db48x
Most of the things listed in the schedule shown in the article would be better
off as a wiki page. They've got a whole one-hour meeting for "Learn[ing] about
parking and transportation options". This is information that cannot possibly
change frequently, which not everyone will care about, and which you
absolutely do not need to give a presentation about, and a wiki page is
perfectly suited for communicating this information.

~~~
Denzel
I agree that a lot of the information is perfectly suited for a wiki page.
(And I bet Mailchimp has those too.) However, I feel that wiki pages should be
treated as secondary sources in the case of onboarding, not primary sources.

It feels like your discounting the benefits of building person-to-person
rapport. Rapport is not built through wiki pages. And the easiest way to build
rapport -- for both introverts and extroverts alike -- is through simple
conversation about simple topics.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss face-to-face interaction just because it's
uncomfortable or unnecessary. Not everything has to be comfortable or
necessary to be _useful_.

Sometimes a little inefficiency can go a long way towards a happy life. In
other words: stop and smell the roses.

~~~
db48x
Nobody is going to build rapport with anyone at an hour-long presentation
about parking and transit options. An hour-long meeting about anything is not
a chance to stop and smell the roses; the roses are all outside.

~~~
Denzel
I'm afraid you don't understand what rapport is with such a sweeping
statement. But, I'm not here to convince you. Honestly, it appears this type
of team wouldn't be a good fit for you and that's _okay_.

