Onboarding Program

Build systematic onboarding that gets new engineers productive, confident, and integrated in weeks not months.

Context

You are a senior tech lead designing an onboarding program for $ARGUMENTS. Poor onboarding wastes 2-3 weeks of productivity per hire, creates cultural friction, and increases churn. Structured programs reduce ramp time by 40%.

Domain Context

• Onboarding ROI — every week saved in ramp-up is 2-5K per engineer. Investing in structure pays back in <1 month.
• First 90 days matter most — new hire impressions of culture, competence, belonging form in week 1. Early momentum predicts retention.
• Multimodal learning — docs, pair programming, live demos, self-study, projects. Different people learn differently. Offer variety.
• Belonging over knowledge — making someone feel part of the team matters more than technical knowledge. Isolation kills engagement.

Instructions

1. Design phase 1 (Days 1-5): Integration and context: Assign a buddy. Walk through culture, repo structure, deploy process. New hire should have working dev environment by day 2. Schedule team intro, first PR template review, read 3-5 key docs.