How to Onboard a New Developer by Philip Manifestly: The Official Blog

Here, we set up a step-by-step walkthrough of this process and what to expect as they reach each step. Before work begins, start to include your new hire in communication channels such as email chains, Slack channels, Trello boards, and other tools you use. You should additionally read our blog about creating a newcomer handbook for software developers. The goal of an onboarding roadmap is to have different checkpoints to keep track of the developer’s progress and to identify the waterholes. It also helps the onboarding mentor to adjust the tasks based on the developer’s progress. Obviously, make sure the developer can access team communication to ask questions in case something doesn’t work or they get stuck.

This is especially true because the candidate may have been unwilling to ask too many questions during the interview for fear of appearing inexperienced or unprepared. The sooner your onboarding managers and your new developers can begin the process, the better the outcome both in the short term and in the long run. Here’s a list of things that you Net Developer job description Workable should accomplish before your new software developer starts. You can, of course, give all these accesses only after the need for them comes up, but it is going to make the first couple of days for your employee pretty miserable. It’s better to spend an hour granting them access right away than to lose their goodwill and make a bad first impression.

Sharing performance feedback

We provide companies with senior tech talent and product development expertise to build world-class software. Just tell us what skills you are looking for, and we will send you CVs. If you want to use your resources to their full potential and own the best talent available, you need a great onboarding process. Only then will you reduce turnover and finally see the full capabilities of your new staff.

Because tech roles often rely on using specific tools and contributing to a shared codebase, how you handle onboarding a software developer becomes even more critical. Developer onboarding is the process of integrating and familiarizing new developers into a team or organization. It is a structured approach designed to help new developers become productive and successful in their roles as quickly as possible. Diagramming is a technique that helps developers understand and communicate complex systems, processes, and data. They lay out workflows and architectures in a format that’s easy to scan now and reference later.

Prepare the tools they’ll need for work

That way, onboarding transforms from a drain on resources to a streamlined process that allows everyone to focus on their primary responsibilities in a timely fashion. I’ve lost track of how many developers I’ve onboarded to my engineering teams. Though important, this process is very often a pain point that sucks time away from my day-to-day responsibilities.

When it comes to how to onboard new developers remotely, there’s not a magical strategy you can put in place. Instead, it’s a set of best practices that will help your new hire feel included, meet your company culture, and get up to speed with how work is performed. Your developer onboarding guide should be standard to ensure that all new recruits are treated the same and that no one gets preferential treatment.

Hand-selected developers to fit your needs at scale

For example, a developer might point out that the environment is not challenging enough. In this type of situation, you could give this developer more ambitious tasks and find another candidate for routine work. The best way to learn more about the code is by actively contributing to it. Here, it’s important to gradually increase the difficulty of the tasks. It’s best to provide easy tasks initially so you don’t discourage or overwhelm the developer in the beginning.

  • It’s best to refer to internal documentation that explains each process.
  • They work in a technical field, keep to themselves, and are more self-reliant.
  • Don’t forget to focus on human interaction and the relationship-building aspect of work.
  • Learning names and faces, unraveling a mountain of code, understanding new work processes and technical systems… there’s so much software that they have to do.
  • If a merge request is not assigned, it will probably be ignored and create
    unnecessary delays.

Over the years, I’ve found that hiring developers and bringing them into an agile team requires them being supported by an agile talent management system and excellent onboarding. In fact, new employees who go through a structured onboarding program are 58% more likely to be with the https://g-markets.net/software-development/comptia-authorized-partners-helping-meet-the/ organization after three years. If you want to wrap your head around how important this is just imagine the financial and emotional impact of replacing people in your team every year. Onboarding for software engineers doesn’t have to be complicated—all you need is the right guidance.

Additionally, we applied a further break-down of the onboarding period. We differentiated between first day onboarding, first week onboarding checklist, first 14 days at the office, days 30-90, and final stage onboarding. The latter will be adjusted to match the procedures and practices of your company in terms of process length. Workplace culture – Another important aspect of onboarding developers is workplace culture. They may have come from a culture that did not embrace collaboration or an agile method of working. Ways of working – Not to get into stereotypes here, again, but some developers are a little more reserved.

Below is an example of how a global software development company Algoworks greets their new software engineers on Facebook. A buddy or mentor‘s primary duty is to make the new employees feel comfortable right away. In turn, this will encourage the latter to start contributing to ongoing projects quickly.