0:00:09.151,0:00:14.081 Thank you. Yes. So, um, for those of you[br]who were at the last 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 talk, thank you for your loyalty.[br]I'm gonna talk about technical onboarding 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 training and mentoring now; it's probably 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 not going to be quite as funny. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's a linear talk, unlike our 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 choose-your-own-adventure story last time. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Uh. This is originally a joint talk that was 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 given at PyCon. I'm Kate Heddleston; 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that's my Twitter handle, so you can, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you know, tweet thoughts at me. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I'm a software engineer at Runscope. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We make these sweet shirts that say 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "everything is going to be 200 OK". 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Um, if you want one of them, you can come 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 find me afterwards. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And Nicole Zuckerman was originally my 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 co-presenter. She's a software engineer at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Eventbrite. And I'll let you figure out which 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 one of these two people is her. But 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 basically Nicole and I came together to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 create this talk because we had similar 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 experiences at separate companies. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Nicole went to Hackbright Academy and then 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 went to Eventbrite right afterwards. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I went to a small startup out of college 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and at both of our respective companies, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we -- there wasn't any onboarding. I've mostly 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 worked at companies that were smaller than 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 12 people when I joined, so onboarding was 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 not a huge priority. About a year later, I 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 had gained some confidence, many skills, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like real-world skills. And I looked back 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I thought, there's some things that we 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 can do, even as small startups, to make 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the onboarding experience better. To make 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it easier for people to get up to speed at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 your company without having a huge 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 overhead. Without having to build these 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 massive onboarding programs that they have 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at large companies. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Alright. So, what is onboarding? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For the purposes of this talk, onboarding, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as a definition, is going to be the act of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 taking someone from outside of the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 company, the team, whatever group of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people it is, and making them a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 productive, independent, and confident 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 member of your team. And this sounds 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really nice, right? If all employees were 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 productive and confident and independent, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like, that sounds like a really great 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineering environment. Unfortunately, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that isn't the case a lot of times. Um, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 someone shared a blog post with me the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 other day with their thoughts on 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 onboarding, and he was like yeah, our 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 company is trying to change onboarding so 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that it's not so much about lighting 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 someone on fire and then telling them to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 find water and it's a little more 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 welcoming. It's like, that's good. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So to go through these three things - 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 productivity, independence, and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 confidence - Productivity is pretty simple. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's about creating efficient employees. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 This has to do with giving them the tools 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to write code, deploy code, understand how 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 features get built. Basically get their 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 jobs done. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Independence and autonomy is actually 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 huge. Autonomy, uh, being an autonomous 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 agent is really important to people. The 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 greatest motivations, in fact, come 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 through things that we choose for 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ourselves. The anecdote that I have for 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this is in prisons. They discovered that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 autonomy is really important. So when 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people are in prison environments, a lot 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of their rights and abilities to do things 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 are removed. This leads to riots, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 dissatisfaction, and many things that you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 would think would happen. So what they do 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with prisoners is they give them the right 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to change the channel, and they give them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the right to move their furniture around. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And this little bit of autonomy, this 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ability to choose for themselves what they 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 get to do, even though it's very small, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 reduced prison riots by - significantly. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You want to reduce riots at your company 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by giving people the ability to choose the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 TV channel. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Confidence. Confidence is about creating 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 employees who believe that they are 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 valuable. And the word 'belief' is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 actually really, really important. So a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 lot of people think - they might think 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 'arrogance' and they might think 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 'confidence' and they might think a lot of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 things, but this belief in your value to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the company is paramount. And this is very 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 much a human thing. This doesn't really 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have to do with computers. This just has 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to do with creating an environment where 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 companies feel as though they can enact 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 change, and that they are capable of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 enacting change. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Oh. This - the belief is really important. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Also they did a study. So how many of you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have heard of the concept of 'stereotype 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 effect'? Stereotype - do I smell? Okay. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So the stereotype effect works like this. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There are stereotypes in the world. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "Asians are good at math." "Women are bad 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with computers." And what they've found is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that, before tests, tests on things like 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 physics or math, what they'll do is they 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 reminded one group of this stereotype. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 "Women are bad at math; men are better at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 math. Asians are better at math than all 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of those groups." And what they found was, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 when they reminded people of those 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 stereotypes, people performed to the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 stereotype. If they didn't tell anyone at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 all, people performed in a control group 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 setting, and then the third group that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they did is that they told people that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 their ability to do well on the test came 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from these sort of intrinsic motivators, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like if you work hard you'll be good at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 math, if you think about like your own 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 personal qualities that's helpful, what 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they saw was that everyone's performance 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 improved and there was actually no 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 difference across these different lines. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So stereotype effect is really important. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's this belief that you are good at - at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 something or not. And what's funny is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 just being told that you are good at this 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 might actually change your performance. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Okay. Why do you care? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Um, you're all already here, so you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 probably care about technical onboarding 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and training at your company. Maybe you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have to hire a bunch of new engineers out 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of college, maybe you have a bunch of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 interns coming on board and you're like 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 terrified, because what are you going to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 do with all of those interns. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There's four categories that you should 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 care about when thinking about onboarding. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There's the individual, there's the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 company, there's the team, and then 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 there's also a bonus section on diversity. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Onboarding is really important for the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 individual. The cost of losing an employee 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 can range from tens of thousands of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 dollars to 1.5-2x their salary. If 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 someone gets off to the wrong foot at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 your company, if they're not happy, if 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they never get up to speed, if they never 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 feel autonomous, confident, and productive 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at your company, you're probably going to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 lose them. And that's really expensive. So 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 having good onboarding, just getting 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 everyone off to a good start, is really 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 important for individuals. It gets them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 going upwards like this. It builds their 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 skills, their confidence, their happiness. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The next one is the company. Onboarding is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really important for the collective 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 productivity of the company, and the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 anecdote for this one is at LinkedIn. For 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a while, LinkedIn was actually losing 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 productivity for every engineer that was 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 added to their team. And this was a huge 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 crisis. They actually had to bring in some 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 new executives, some new managers, and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they were like, we have to stop hiring. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Like, adding engineers to our team is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 actually decreasing our productivity. This 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is a nightmare. Uh. What you really want 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is something more like this. We want every 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 new engineer we add to the team to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 increase productivity. So LinkedIn had to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 do this massive reorganization. They had 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to do a whole bunch of getting rid of some 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 things, adding some things, adding 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 onboarding and training, and basically 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 streamlining everything so that new 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers could come in and be productive. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So onboarding and having onboarding early 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is going to stave off some of these 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 problems that you might run into later. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Team. So we talk a lot about technical 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 debt - how many people have talked about, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or heard about, the term 'technical debt'? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - yeah, you went to build something really 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 fast, you kind of cut corners, and six 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 months later you're like aw crap, we have 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to rebuild this, we have a lot of bugs, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this is completely unmaintainable. Nobody 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 knows how to change this system. Well, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 similarly there's team debt. If you add a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 lot of engineers really fast and really 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 thoughtlessly, you can get something like 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this happening. Everyone's running in a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 different direction. And since people are 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the most important component for building 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 software, um, this is really, really 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 detrimental. You want something that's 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 more like this. Obviously. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 This is my favorite equation that I've 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ever made up. The story behind this 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 equation, and I have a lot of sports 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 anecdotes, 'cause I played sports for a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 long time, and I coached sports for a long 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 time. But in college when I was done 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 playing, I actually coached JV girls' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 swimming and water polo. So - JV girls' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 water polo, very new to most of the girls. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They couldn't swim, they couldn't throw a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ball, we're talking like very basic 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 skills. Playing a full game, with like all 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 seven players on the field, was, I mean it 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 was like, you know when you watch like 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 peewee soccer and all the kids kind of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like chase the ball around? It's a little 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 bit like that. And so a huge amount of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 what I did was just basic skills. But the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 other half was kind of the emotional 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 team-building part. And I told them this. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was like, look. Your ability to win 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 games, and your ability to do well at this 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 sport, even at this very introductory 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 level, is the sum of your talent multiplied 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by your ability to work together as a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 team. Some of the people on the team 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 didn't have a lot of natural talent. They 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 were going to have to work really hard to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 build their skills. But that's fine. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Because if they focused a lot on working 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 together, they focused a lot on getting 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 things done as a cohesive unit, they can 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 actually beat teams that had more 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 collective talent, but didn't work 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 together quite as well. And we've actually 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 seen this in software engineering. A lot 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of, uh, the most popular tools out there 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 were built by teams of less than ten. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Gmail, for example, was built by a team of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I think like five to seven people? It's 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 maintained by, like, a team of over 400 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers. So you can get a lot done 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 collectively as a small group in terms of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 productivity, in terms of building really 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 cool products, without having super 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 talented engineers. If they all work 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really well together, a lot of mediocre 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers can do more than a few talented 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers who are kind of assholes. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Alright. The bonus section is diversity. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So to illustrate diversity, I have 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 sneetches. The story of sneetches is a Dr. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Seuss book. There's the star-bellied 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 sneetches and the non-star-bellied 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 sneetches. And it's this story about the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 rift that's caused in the community of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 sneetches based on those who had star 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 bellies and those who did not have star 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 bellies. And I use it to represent 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 diversity because diversity can mean a lot 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of things. There's the classic ones, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 there's gender and racial diversity. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There's also things like introverts vs 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 extroverts. Um. Communication styles. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I don't know. Philosophical backgrounds. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Cultural backgrounds that don't have to do 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with race but have to do with how you were 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 brought up. So diversity can mean a lot 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of things at companies. And why is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 diversity critical? And why is onboarding 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a really useful tool for increasing[br]diversity? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Well, basically what happens is this. If 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you have no onboarding, people coming into 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the company are going to rely on the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 existing social structures to get up to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 speed. So that means whatever the original 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 group of people is, they probably have a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 way that they talk about things. They 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 probably have certain social events that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they do. They probably look fairly 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 similar. And if someone comes onboard 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who's like them, who's able to communicate, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who's able to go out with them, who's able 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to connect with this core group based on 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 these existing social structures, they're 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 going to do better than someone who's not 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like the original group. Because what you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have when you have no onboarding is not 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 no onboarding. You have onboarding that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 relies on the social structures that you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have in place. So creating an onboarding 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 program that's slightly more structured, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 slightly more explicit, will benefit 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people who are different, people who don't 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 naturally speak the way that people at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 your company already speak, that don't 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 naturally want to do the types of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 activities that people at your company 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 wanna do. Because not everyone wants to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 go out drinking at 10pm on a Tuesday night 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 if you have a really young, party-oriented 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 company. So you want to give everyone 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a fair chance because there's very 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 talented people who look very different 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from each other. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Who can onboard? Anyone can onboard! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 This is a team of people carrying a canoe, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this is not a group of ants carrying a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 taco, just to let you know. I draw these 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 myself, by the way. I'm not a very good 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 artist. Um. Anyone can onboard, and in 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 fact onboarding should be a collective 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 effort. This distributes the load. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 One person alone trying to onboard 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 everyone is gonna burn them out. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Similarly, I was talking to someone about 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 mentorship, and someone else was saying, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 oh, you have to have a lot of experience 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to mentor. And depending on the type of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 mentoring you're doing, that's true. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But going from junior engineer to senior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineer is not a one-step process. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It involves going from junior engineer to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 less-junior engineer, to less-junior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineer, to maybe mid-level engineer, to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 slightly more mid-level engineer, to 'hey! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 oh! I kind of think I get this now!' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And so having someone that's very 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 experienced, who can guide the overall 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 path is important, but some of the best 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people to mentor and train your new junior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers are going to be the ones who 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 just did it. They're going to still have 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 empathy for what it's like to take[br]that step. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They're going to understand the problems 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that they're running into. They're going 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to actually care about what this person is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 doing, and the more senior you get and the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 further away from that you get, the less 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 empathy that you have for people. And in 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 fact we all know this. Senior engineers 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 are total curmudgeons. They're like, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 'everything is going to break and it's all 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 going to hell and I don't know why we care 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and come into work every day.' And junior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers are like, 'oh my god, that's 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 awful, I'm so excited about[br]what I'm doing.' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When? Okay. Onboarding starts as soon as 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the offer is accepted. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Basically, onboarding is not just about 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 teaching someone the skills that they need 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to be successful about your company; 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it's about bringing another human being 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 into a group of human beings. So: making 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 someone feel welcome. Figuring out how to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 integrate them into the team. That's going 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to start as soon as they've decided[br]to come on board. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Onboarding roughly ends when someone is [br]reliably independent. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And this can mean different things to[br]different companies, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I left it kind of vague on purpose, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but the idea for a junior engineer[br]at least 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is that we bring them into the company and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they're kind of - like our onboarding 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 program is done when they're reliably[br]independent. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We can give them tasks and trust that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they're going to come up with 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a semi-reasonable solution 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in a semi-reasonable amount of time. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And we can manage that effectively. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So the how section that we're going to go 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 through now is a little bit 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 philosophically about how to do this, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but we're also going to focus on concrete 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 examples and ideas for how you can build 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the onboarding program at your company. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The first thing to think about when[br]onboarding people 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is to maximize your return on investment. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And this might seem somewhat callous, but 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at the end of the day why wouldn't you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 want to maximize your return on[br]investment? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Like you don't want to put a ton of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 resources into something and get less out 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of it than you put in. That just doesn't 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 even make sense. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's a really, really common pitfall for 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 mentors, especially first-time mentors. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So if you have people onboarding junior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers at your company and they've 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 never onboarded someone, what you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 essentially have is you have a[br]junior mentor 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 onboarding a junior engineer. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 That you have someone who's never done 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this before, they don't know what's going[br]on. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I love talking to people who are[br]first-time mentors. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They're like, I'm going to be the best 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 onboarding mentor ever. We're going to do 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 everything together, we're going to take 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 these courses, we're just going to - 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by the, by time they're done with these 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 three months they're going to know 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 everything I know. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And that's highly unrealistic because 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people only absorb information at[br]certain rates. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Also your expertise has to do with the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 number of issues that you've seen, and it 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 just takes time. Over time you see more 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 issues, you solve them, you fix them. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So people are going to grow at the rate 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they're going to grow. You can help 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 make that better, you can help focus their[br]path, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but you're not going to make them into a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 senior engineer overnight. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 This tends to burn out mentors, so 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people do this, they burn themselves out 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in three months because it's exhausting 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 teaching someone, and then they're like, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I can't be a mentor again for another[br]year. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And your company's like, well, OK, I guess 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we can't hire any more junior engineers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Like, we don't have anyone to train them. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Instead I like to think of it as 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 bumper bowling. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 One of the tenets of expertise is that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you're able to set boundaries. You know 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the landscape. You know everything about 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this arena. So you can set boundaries. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You can scope problems. You can figure 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 out exactly what needs to be done, and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 exactly what doesn't need to be done. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Junior engineers, by definition, are not 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 good at scoping. They don't know what the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 boundaries are. So what you need to do is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 set them for the junior engineers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Bumper bowling is a great example. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You just - you set up the bumpers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's fine if they just hit the bumper on 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 each side going down. They're still 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 going in that direction, and that's where 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we want them to go. You don't have to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 handhold them through the process. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You don't have to spend tons of time with 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 them. Instead you can just create an 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 environment where they can kind of mess up 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and learn on their own, and you can come 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in and help them grow when that needs to[br]happen. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So the onboarding plan - there's three 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 major categories. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There's technical knowledge, company 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 knowledge and process, and personal[br]development. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 These are about equal thirds for someone. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We tend to think that the technical 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 knowledge is the most important thing, and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it's, people think it's like 80% of what 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers do. It's probably about a third. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Like, another third is domain knowledge of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that company. How do I build a feature at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this company. How do I ship code at this 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 company. How do I deploy, given our 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 deployment system. And then personal 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 development. Like the confidence, the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 autonomy, all of those different things, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that's another third. People tend to think 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that skills - or that confidence follows 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 skills, but in practice it's usually the[br]reverse. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 People who are confident will gain skills 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at a much more rapid rate than people 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who lack confidence. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 OK. Week 1. Week 1 should be pretty simple 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for new engineers. Dev environment setup 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is really important. The thing that you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 can do to help new engineers is just 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 automate as many tools as possible. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The more automation the better. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The more maintainability the better. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 As engineers, that is one of the best 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 things we can do for people's process, is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 make sure that a lot of these things are 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 automated. So shipping code as well. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If shipping code is really well-automated, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it's super easy for you to ship code, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it's going to be easy to bring someone, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 even someone who's junior, on board, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and get them to a place where they can[br]ship code. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So for dev environments, again, automation. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Have the last person who set up the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 dev environment help the new person. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They know all the pitfalls. They just 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 did it. They just had to go through 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 setting up their development environment. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You don't need a senior engineer, you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 don't need someone who knows a lot about 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 some other random thing. It's just dev 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 environment setup. So the last person who 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 joined does dev environment setup. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Have them ship small changes as soon as[br]possible. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If you can have someone deploy on the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 first day, that's awesome. That means you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have really good automation tools. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Third, journaling and note-taking. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Have them start taking notes. Three things 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that they learned this week. For junior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers, this is going to be really[br]important. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They're probably not going to know a lot[br]of things, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and you're going to be surprised at what 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they do and don't know, so having them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 take notes that you can talk about once a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 week is really great. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And then finally, a social event. And a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 social event's actually a really good 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 activity, even for people who are not 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 junior. A social event's just: we're gonna 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 hang out, I'm going to learn everyone on 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 my immediate team's name, because if I 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 want to ask a question, it's really nice 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to know that person's name. And I'm going 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to feel more comfortable talking to other 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people on my team. Because a huge amount 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of work that you need when you're new, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 regardless of level, is just the ability 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to go talk to someone else on your team. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Alright. Week 2. Week 2 you can start 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 throwing more information at your new[br]engineer. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The first week is so overwhelming 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a lot of times that things just go in one 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ear and out the other. So I recommend 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 doing history of the company and team map 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 second week. So history of the company - 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 where does the company come from, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 why was it started, who were the founders, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 what was the reason that it got here, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 what were some of the pitfalls that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 happened along the way, why do we target 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the markets that we target. And a[br]team map, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 which seems really simple, but just giving 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 them a map - like, this is Bob, Bob sits 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 over there, Bob is really good at redis, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 he deals with all of our asynchronous 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 task queues, um, so go talk to him about 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that. Or, like, so-and-so is really good 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at building fully-fledged future products. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They have a great design sense, but 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they're also good at building front-end 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 features. So knowing those things is super 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 helpful to new engineers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Shadowing and code labs are good 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 activities to get started the second or 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 third week. Shadowing is what it sounds 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like. Have them sit down with someone 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who's more senior, either mid-level or 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 senior, whatever you want to do, and watch 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 what that other person does. What kind of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 keyboard shortcuts do they use? What type 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of bash commands do they use? What does 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that bash command do? Why are they doing 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 all of the things that they're doing? They 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 can learn and absorb a lot of information 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 just by watching other people for an hour, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 either once a week or every day if you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 want to be really aggressive. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Code labs are something that was started 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at Eventbrite. Basically it's like a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 new engineer AMA. So it's a safe space - 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 emphasis on the word safe, no judgment, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 your questions are not stupid - it's 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 totally fine if they want to ask concepts 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that might seem really beginner, but 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they can just ask one of the engineers 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at your company anything. So you can 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 rotate the engineers, people with 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 different expertise can come in, but 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really what you want for the person 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 running a Code Lab is someone who makes 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people feel safe. Again, if people are 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 terrified of asking questions they're not 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 going to ask questions. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Week 3. Now we start to get into some 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the higher-level stuff. One-on-ones, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 goal-setting, feedback, presentations. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 One-on-ones. Most companies have totally 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 bought into the idea that you need to do 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 these now, but weekly one-on-ones are 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really important. Emphasis on weekly. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Having channels for feedback, for easy 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 communication, is so important. If 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 someone runs into an issue, the overhead 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for telling someone who's more senior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 about this problem that they've run 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 into is really high. Having to schedule a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 meeting to give someone bad news is one 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the worst things that anyone has to do. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So creating these channels for constant 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 feedback is really important. Even if 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 every week they're like, 'I'm doing great, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 there's nothing to talk about!' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 That's totally fine. This is still 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a really good thing to do. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Goal-setting and feedback: it might seem 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really silly and simple and kind of like, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 second-grade - what are your goals[br]for this? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But people are goal-oriented, and they do 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really well if they set goals. 'In the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 next three months I would like to learn 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 more about how to build features in 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 JavaScript. In the next six months, I'd 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really like to learn how to build the API 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 layer for the features that I've built[br]in JavaScript.' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Presentations. The best way to learn 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 something is to teach it. This has been 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 proven over and over again. So, force your 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 new engineers to do five-minute 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 presentations on topics. 'I want you to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 present on regular expressions. Tell us 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 everything that you can figure out about 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 regular expressions, do a short 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 presentation about them, teach us regular 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 expressions.' And by the end of that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 presentation, they'll know how to use 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 regular expressions. By the way, I gave 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this talk at RailsConf, which is ruby, and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I totally didn't even think about what I'd 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 written on this slide here, but multiple 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people at the end came up and they were 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like, you do know that that was in Python, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 right? I was like, yeah, Python is[br]awesome. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They notice. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Alright. Week 4. Week 4 is review[br]concepts, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 check in regular, regularly, elective 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 shadowing, and start co-piloting, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 co-piloting a larger project. So basically 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 now you're just kind of setting, getting 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 set into a rhythm. You want to be able to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 check in with them, you want them to feel 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as if they can talk to you, shadowing can 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 become elective, hopefully they have 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 enough confidence now to say, oh I want to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 shadow that person and learn that thing, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and go set it up for themselves. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Co-piloting a larger project is kind of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like driver's ed. They can do this with 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 someone who's much more senior, but the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 senior person really has an emergency 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 brake on their side, so they can give them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 tasks - Actually, the way I, the way I 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like to do it is, if you put them with 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 someone who's more senior, they do all 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the grunt tasks. The senior person 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 doesn't want to do, I don't know, all of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 these grunt tasks that are too trivial 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for them, but just work that has to get 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 done, but that is really valuable learning 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for someone who's junior. They've never 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 seen any of it before. So it's exciting. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So then you have these really great 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 pairings of someone who's very senior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and someone who's very junior, and the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 junior person's running around doing all 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the grunt work and super-excited about it, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and the senior person is thrilled that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they don't have to do the grunt work any[br]more. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Alright. Beyond. If onboarding has gone 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 well, hopefully this comes and it's really 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 easy. You just check in on progress, you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 tailor projects and code labs to their 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 needs, you start doing formal[br]apprenticeships, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and you start doing assessment, and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 hopefully those assessments are positive. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Apprenticeships - that has to do a little 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 bit with what I talked about. Just being 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 taken under someone's wing. The best way 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to learn is from imitating someone who's 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really good at something. In fact they 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 find that that's true with athletes. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Athletes who are put under someone who's, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like, really good and much more 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 experienced at the sport will learn it at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a faster rate. So just put them around 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people who are good at this that they can 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 watch and imitate and follow. If you put 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 them with someone who has bad practices, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I've seen this happen, and it's a pet 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 peeve of mine - if you put them with 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 someone who's senior but who has really 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 bad practices, and that junior person 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 picks up those bad practices, and you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 punish that junior person for the bad 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 practices that they picked up from the 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 person that you paired them with, that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is a really bad experience. So a lot of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 times we let senior engineers get away 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 with behavior that we wouldn't let junior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers get away with. Be cognizant 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of that. So know what bad practices some 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of your engineers might be passing on to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 junior engineers, and don't punish them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 for it. Just explain to them why that's 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 bad, or put them with someone who has a 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really good practice in that area. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Assessment is really important. People's 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 trajectories are gonna be wildly[br]different. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Some people are gonna do awesome and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they're gonna shoot straight up, some 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people are gonna plateau, some people 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 are gonna be really up and down. So having 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a plan for assessment is important. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 As we've said before, technical ability 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is not the only category to assess. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There's confidence, there's code quality, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 communication, judgment, and technical 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 knowledge. Judgment is one of the bigger 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ones. It's slightly more difficult to[br]assess, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but if you can hire people who have great 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 judgment, you can trust them to do things, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 even if they're really junior, that are 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 going to be good. And the example of this 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is one of my friends at Hearsay Social, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the last company I was at, she worked in 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 support for a long time. And she taught 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 herself engineering on the side. So when 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 she first started engineering, by every 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 definition she was very junior at 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineering. But she knew the product 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 inside and out. She knew the customers 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 inside and out, and she knew exactly what 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 needed to be built in any given situation. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In other words, she had excellent[br]judgment. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So I could give her tasks, tasks that, I 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 mean, they were pretty simple but she 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 might take a little bit longer on, but 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 when she came back to me with the feature 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that she had built, I was like, yes, This 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 exactly solves the problem that we wanted 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to solve. This is awesome. You've saved us 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 all time. Conversely, engineers with bad 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 judgment will build terrible things very 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 quickly for your site, and then you're 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like, no no, please don't merge that, and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you're like, taking code out. So judgment 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is something that's really really great if 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you can find it in someone, and it's hard 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to assess, but I recommend that as 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 something to look for in junior engineers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Alright. The main takeaways. Onboarding 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 aims to make new team members confident, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 productive, and independent. If you focus 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 on these three things, and you really try 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to get people to that place, you're gonna 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have successful engineers most of the[br]time. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It benefits everyone in the long run. The 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 individual gains skills, the company is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 more productive, the team is more[br]productive, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and diversity is better at your company. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And finally anyone can be involved in 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 onboarding, so you don't have to be super 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 senior. Getting everyone involved will 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 spread out the load, it will make it 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 easier to onboard new engineers, and for 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 startups who don't have resources, it's 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 going to make it possible to hire junior 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 engineers. And since there's two ways to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 get great engineers at your company, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 stealing them or making them, it's good to 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have channels for making engineers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And that's it!