New Job

Actions

Ask your manager or tech lead for the initial list of names. A directed search is more efficient.
find someone on the team and ask for 30 minutes with them. Repeat the above process for every name you’re given. Don’t stop until there are no new names. In that meeting you have a simple agenda:
- For the first 25 minutes: ask them to tell you everything they think you should know. Take copious notes. Only stop them to ask about things you don’t understand. Always stop them to ask about things you don’t understand.
  - Ask targeted questions to learn what you need
    Learning team direction: “What is the motivation behind your work?”, “How does this fit into the team’s plan?”, “What wins are we expecting from this?”
    Learning system design: “Where does your work fit into the overall system?”, “What pieces does our team own?”
    Learning who knows what: “Who knows the most about ?”, “If breaks, who knows how to fix it?”
- For the next 3 minutes: ask about the biggest challenges the team has right now.
- In the final 2 minutes: ask who else you should talk to. Write down every name they give you.
Your immediate priority should be to start landing code.
- land a ton of low-risk changes (~1-2 per day) that improved the codebase
your manager should pair you with an “onboarding buddy” who’ll provide hands-on support.
- Get someone senior to pair
Find the following
- Up-to-date wiki on setting up your dev environment
- Async support channels (e.g. Q&A groups, eng chat threads) to get small technical questions answered
- Backlog of unambiguous, low-risk tasks
- Source code repository
Access to all applications etc