

Ask HN: Experience with setting up a dev environemt at a new company? - arthurk

I&#x27;m wondering if anyone can share their experience with setting up a development environment after starting at a new company.<p>The reason for this is, that I&#x27;m trying to make it as easy as possible for new people starting at our company and am wondering how other people solved this problem.<p>Thanks!
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stephenr
While tools like vagrant, editorconfig, scripts etc can help - my suggestion
above all else would be to _document_ your standard environment.

If a tool doesn't work but you know what it was trying to achieve you can
usually get there manually. If you don't know what it was trying to do, you're
pretty much fucked.

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twunde
1\. As stephenr says, create a document/checklist. This should include steps
on how to set up db access, vm access, installing common tools (like XCode for
Mac), etc. If there are standard HR procedures like setting up direct deposit,
instructions on how to do that too. Machine set up can be automated using
tools like Boxen.

2\. Provide application documentation and an intro to your company and
industry domain knowledge. This should be part doc and part talk.

3\. Assign someone to be their guide for two weeks. This person should be
responsible for the small things like guiding them through application
patterns, odd questions etc.

Above all, do your best to get your new hire in the code and working even if
it's just bug fixing the first week.

Keep in mind that onboarding will have to continue to evolve as your company
scales. What worked 3 hires ago, may need to be tweaked now

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afrancis
As many already suggested, having documentation and a "chaperone" are a great
start. On the technical front, found Docker to be a god-send for painlessly
giving a new employee their own copy of the production environment.

