Onboarding SUCKS as a New Developer

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Hey folks, I am just leaving the office. Um, we're going to Reddit. This one is about joining a new team and feeling like it's difficult to on board in terms of getting information, that kind of stuff. So, we'll chat through that. And, uh, I'm hoping this is going to feel relevant to a lot of people because I have seen this kind of thing come up. We've talked about this before on code commute, so it's a bit of a repeat topic, but I think it's good to to chat through these things. So, this person was saying, and I don't have it pulled up in front of my face as I drive here because that would be uh a mess, but they're saying that um you know, they're finding it difficult. They're given a task and they want to go reach out to get clarity on the task because there's not a lot of clarity.

Then they reach out to people. Well, they're not really getting decent answers or much information at all. Then they get, you know, here's a dock or this person kind of said like what looks, you know, supposed to be a dock to try and give guidance on on some topic or some area, which is kind of ironic because the last couple videos talking about documentation and stuff like that. Um, and how it's basically documentation is always dog which sucks. Um because a lot of us want good documentation. Uh we all say like good documentation is going to help us. No one wants to do it though. And having and maintaining good documentation is a complete pain in the ass. But all of us say that it would help. So it's kind of funny. Um so they're kind of struggling with that. Uh they said their manager doesn't really have you know the details that they need to kind of help them.

So, it seems like there's a bit of disconnect there. So, overall, it's kind of like, hey, to me, it seems like, hey, go do these tasks and then, uh, go figure it out on your own. And even though they're asking for help and getting some guidance, which I think is good, like you should be doing that, um, the end result is like they just don't feel like they're getting the support they need. So, I wanted to, you know, that's the the framing of this. I hope I captured it correctly. So, let's chat through it. Um, first of all, uh, and this, you know, maybe doesn't help this person right in this moment, but I always think it's really good to have an onboarding buddy for anyone joining any team. I don't care what level you're at. Uh, I don't care if you're, you know, master programmer of the universe, whatever level that is.

Like if you're joining a new team, having someone that you can stay in touch with that you feel like you know they're going to be there to answer questions and try to help you out because that is a responsibility that they're consciously taking on. I think that's really good. Obviously, uh it seems a little bit exaggerated if you're super super senior like do you really need that? You might not need it, but I think it's good to have. And I think that if you are more junior, then absolutely this goes from a nice to have to like a you better be doing this or else it's going to be a experience because of situations like we're seeing in this example. Um, I don't I don't know.

Like I feel like if you're I would love to hear people's opinions on this, but I feel like if you don't have some type of onboarding buddy or some system set up where you're like basically I don't want to say like appointing almost appointing though setting up some type of responsibility uh for people to help the new people. I think it's a recipe for uh you know a really shitty start. And so I highly encourage people to do this. Um it doesn't like that might sound like it's a huge ask, but it's really not. Um I just want to give you a quick example. We have an intern that returned and uh so he's he's working with us again. When he was an intern, sorry, he's returned full-time. When he was an intern, uh he was working under one of our senior engineers. It was really awesome.

I feel like they had a solid working relationship, you know, always heard good feedback from both sides. So like I think he felt well supported. Senior engineer liked working with them. Like everything felt really good about that. And I know from one-on-one conversations I had heard from both sides like you know um the intern now the the new full-time employee you know always asking good questions, not hesitating to reach out like just this is awesome. This is what we want. This Tesla's tailgating me. I don't understand why. Yes, your car is also white, but it's a Tesla. Um, you try to pass me over this solid line, I'm going to be pissed. So this is like in my opinion a really good experience for onboarding someone because he had someone he could reach out to at any point in time. Felt really comfortable asking questions, had support.

And so unfortunately that senior engineers uh not on my team anymore. He doesn't work for us. And so this intern has returned and it's like, "Oh man, like I really wish that I had the the same senior engineer to help him with, you know, being his onboarding buddy again because they worked so well together and I really want that, but I don't have that." So, you know, even when I was meeting with the the new hire, I was like, "Hey, like sorry that this person is not with the team anymore, but like, you know, I want to make sure you have a good experience." I said, "Here's, you know, other people on the team that I know would also be awesome to work with. It's not going to be the same working relationship, right? Because they're different people." But I said, "They're awesome. They know that you're starting.

They're happy to help." And I told them what I would hope that this uh more senior engineer told this individual, which was like, "If you have any questions at any point, like, please, please message me. Um, you know, I'm happy to get on a call if I'm free. if I'm, you know, my status shows that I'm in meetings, I'm like, I take a lot of meetings every day. That's part of my job. But I said, I'm never too busy for people on the team. If you see that I'm in a meeting and you have stuff you want to ask, just message me and as soon as I'm free, I'm happy to like, you know, message you back or if we need to get on a call, we'll do that. So, problem is I can only say that so much, right? Um, you kind of you kind of have to live this stuff by example, prove it with your actions.

Uh the good news is because I have worked with this individual before. I do feel like we have a good working relationship that way. I hope that's how I feel. Um I I think that he feels very comfortable being able to ask me questions, but uh I just want to be very aware of it, right? Because he used to have a really really good onboarding buddy and uh I just want to make sure that he he still has a good experience like that. You got to let me in, pal. Let's go. One more. Okay. So, again, might be too late for this person who's working at this place, but I, you know, for other people listening to this, if you're in a situation where you're getting new hires on, if you're a decision maker and you're you have new tires coming onto your team, this is something I would highly encourage you set up.

Onboarding buddies, just makes a safe place where people ask questions. I think it's super helpful. Okay. Um, next thing. Uh, let's see. I think it's a bit of a depends on how people are actually communicating this stuff. To me, it's a bit of a culture smell. If you're not getting the help from people on the team, like if people if everyone's just like, "Here's a dock. Go away." Um, that feels pretty shitty to me. I read one of the Reddit comments, people saying like, "You know what? Maybe the the point of the documentation is not actually to like to give you the answers. is to point you in the right direction. And I can appreciate that. Absolutely. But I think the problem ends up being like if you're being pointed in a direction and that's not enough, then what is it? Just, you know, skill issue like you're you're too bad at your job.

I don't think that's fair. So, hey, look, if it's to point you in the right direction and that's not sufficient, okay, like you should, in my opinion, be in an environment where like it's great. They tried to set you up that way and, you know, get you to kind of look around, empower you to do that, encourage you to do that, and if you still need help, they should try to make themselves available. I think a lot of the time what happens is that there's this um what's the word like people are people are motivated to like take care of themselves. Uh what's motivation motivated is not the right word. Um I it's not encouraged. It's not motivated. Someone please help me in the comments. There's a word I want. Um basically it's like it's in their best interest to focus on themselves. And that creates a pretty crappy environment.

So just to give you an example, like uh if everyone's super focused on promotions and there's nothing wrong with trying to think about your promotion and like how you're, you know, operating in your career, but if the way that you achieve that is to ignore other people or disregard other people and only do you, then I think that that's a environment to be in. And realistically, I don't think that that actually makes better software engineers. I think that creates silos. So, um, that's going to haunt me. There's a word. Um, anyway, whatever. I'll never know it. Um, someone comments save me. So, I think that you can absolutely have these types of environments. I have seen this type of thing, not necessarily for a whole team, but I've seen individuals act like this.

Uh, I'm not saying this is the only way that this happens, by the way, but I've definitely seen individuals that are like hyperfocused on just like like what does my career progression look like to the point where it's complete disregard of everything else going on around them. And like I don't know, to me it's pretty obvious what it's happening. And uh it's not only disregard, it's actually like more friction or more of a pain in the ass uh for people around them. Buddy, you need to speed up so I can get in that lane. You're driving me absolutely nuts. Just there's like 10 car lengths. Thank you. Christ. The worst. Okay, I got to I need a second to think cuz I got to move into this fast lane and buddy in front of me has never driven a vehicle before apparently. U not their fault.

Maybe it is. Who knows? Come on. This person doesn't have their lights on. They should join my friend in front of me. It's hard because I have to watch behind me but also in front of me because the person in front uh Oh, I should have went H. That's it. We're trapped for life. This thing's in sport mode, right? Okay. Okay. Let's go. Let's go. Ready. Oh, that was anticlimatic. But here we are. Okay. Um, now that we're in the fast lane, the the crappy thing about people that operate like this is that it only takes one person to do this and they don't realize because they're so absorbed in their own little world that it actually has a very negative effect on the rest of the team. And if they're under a manager who does not do anything to address this, it creates a really big problem.

Literally only takes one person to do this kind of thing to be kind of toxic and it can bring down the productivity of the rest of the team. So when I hear this person des in this Reddit post describing like they're not really getting help from people, they're kind of like here's a dog, go away. Um, we don't really know if that's actually what it looks like. It might feel that way, which is, you know, uh, an observation. This is what this person feels like they're experiencing. So, there's probably something to be improved there. Um, but truly, if people are like, I don't have time to help you cuz I got to focus on me. Um, then I I honestly don't think that's a good spot to be. Um, I think that the reality is if you're on a team of people, you have a like a shared goal which is to, you know, do deliver more value, right?

Like do better work as a team and that happens by helping each other. If you think about it, you have this new employee that started, right? If this person it gets brought up to speed faster, they can help with that goal. Now, this goes back to the point I was trying to say earlier, but like if there's if there's no if there's no component of someone's promotion or component of like their um their performance that has anything to do with mentoring, if that's just not a factor, then I think that you get people that have this this kind of attitude, right? If it's not if it's not really valued by people that are talking about promotions and performance, you're going like people will not optimize for that. They're going to optimize for just themselves. So, I think it's really important to try including like if you want to become a more senior engineer, you have an expectation of you to be bringing up those around you.

And that means that if you're giving them a dock and trying to point them in the right direction, if that's not sufficient, there's got to be something more than that. either that's take the time to go help that person or like maybe your doc is and it needs a little bit more work, but it's certainly not don't do anything. However, we don't really know truly what's happening in the situation, but this is this person's feeling. So, what can this person do? Well, I think one thing I've seen that is um like I would caution this person against or like give them awareness is like if you feel like you're walking through a dock, okay, and you're like it's not helping and you get frustrated. If this is a common thing that happens, sometimes the side effect is that you get given a dock of steps to go follow or things to go look at and as soon as you have a little bit of frustration with it, you just give up on it.

This might sound kind of silly, but I've seen this pattern happen not just with junior people, but like people that have higher levels, like people at my level. I have seen people get frustrated by this kind of thing where they just disregard it. They're like as soon as they run into a little roadblock, no, screw it. You know, this doesn't work. I don't want anything to do with this. And if you start to develop that mindset, it's kind of dangerous because then you don't start digging into things. And that was maybe the whole point. So, it's like with anything, getting a little bit stuck, that's okay. That's how you're going to learn stuff. Um, but there's sort of like a sweet spot, right? If you're like, if you go to someone and they give you the answer right away, you don't really learn much from that.

If you go to someone and ask for help and or you sorry you never even ask for help or people that you ask for help never give you any information. You might be roadblocked for way too long but there's some spot in the middle where it's like hey look you're stuck on this. You try some things out. You're like okay I'm definitely stuck. You either get out of that or you ask for help at that point and they get that little nudge out of your rut. it's probably a good spot, but it's going to vary from thing to thing for how much time you spend on it before it's like diminishing returns, right? So, I think in this person's case, number one, I would recommend please do not give up on trying to like leverage the documentation. If that's what's being given to you, try to leverage it.

What I would say is that if you're leveraging it and getting stuck and you've given it like, you know, giving it an honest shot and like honor system here, right? If you're reflecting on this and you're like, "Yeah, I was just frustrated and I didn't actually I didn't really do anything or I didn't try to think about it different ways." Like I don't know like you are a software engineer, right? It's not supposed to be trivial. Put a little bit of thought into it. put a little bit of effort in. If you're still getting stuck, what you can do is go back to the person and say, "Look, I tried this step, this step, this step. Here's where I got to. Here's the things I tried that weren't working, but the different variations of it." Like, basically, give some evidence to the person that you're asking for help.

give them some evidence that you tried. Because something else that we haven't talked about is that maybe these engineers on this team have been burned by trying to help people that don't actually like seem to give a crap because and this can be for any reason, but if if you're trying to help people and you're spending a lot of time on it and the end result is like, you know, the next time they're coming back with the same question, you're like, "Dude, I just spent like two days with you on this and it's the exact same thing. Like it might be that you were unfortunately bad at helping. It might be that this person wasn't actually paying attention. Could, like I said, it could be anything. But when people get frustrated by this, incentivized, that's the word. I knew it would come back someday. They're not incentivized.

So people are not incentivized to help junior developers get ramped up because they're like, I spent all this time and every time I do this, it doesn't result in anything useful, right? I just result in me spending even more time. Um, so people might have been burned by this, but I think it's a really good um a good thing to practice is like try to when you're going back to ask for help again, demonstrate them. Here's the things that I've tried. Like, I put in an honest effort. I'm not just here trying to waste your time for you to give me the answer right away cuz I didn't try anything. I tried. Here's what I tried. Here's where I got stuck. That's what I would recommend. Um, okay. What else we got? Um, I think on the manager part, this is kind of interesting, right? Um, I will say absolutely as a manager, there's tons of stuff on my team that I don't know.

Tons. There's tons of stuff on my team that I will probably never know. That's a reality. Um, now I hopefully I don't I don't like saying always and never, but my goal is that I should not be. So my goal is to never um tell someone I don't know and there's no followup. If I don't know my I feel like my responsibility is to say I don't know but like here's someone who does know or I don't know and I don't know who does know but I will work with you so we can go find out who does we'll go find the answer together right it's in my best interest if I don't know something I don't just want to be like I don't know man like figure it out like I want to learn too there might be situations where I think it's a good opportunity to be like hey I don't But I think Jimmy knows a lot about this.

I think if you want to go talk to Jimmy about this, that way next time we talk, you can let me know what you learned from Jimmy on this. Like there's sometimes situations like this that'll be beneficial because I want people to do a little bit of networking on the team or to work with partners. Um, but that's a little bit more strategic. And again, I don't want to find myself in a situation ever in my career where I'm like, I don't know something. Which, by the way, that's going to happen a ton. I don't know something and I'm not going to help you at all. Like, that feels like not a thing that I ever want to do. So, I don't know when this person's saying like their manager doesn't know. Like, I don't know. I don't expect that my manager knows everything. It's unrealistic.

I don't have that expectation of anyone. But I'm pretty confident that if I said to my manager, I need help with this. If he didn't know, he'd probably say to me, "Here's someone who does or here's someone you could follow up with." Or like, "Hey, that's something I need to go I need to go follow up with. I'll let you know when I go ask some questions and get back to you." Like, I feel very confident about my manager saying that. Um, so I got crazy heartburn out of nowhere. Oh, I'm dying. Doesn't feel good. Um, so I don't know what's actually happening in this situation. So, is the expectation that their manager must know? Is it that their manager is actually just being like unhelpful? Because if that's the case, um, that's not a good spot to be in. That might just be like unfortunately you got a crappy manager.

What can you do about that? I don't know. But I would like if all these other things aren't lining up, you don't have an onboarding buddy to work with. You are working through the documentation trying to get help, documenting what you're doing, following up with people and still not getting support, then following up with your manager and your manager is not being supportive. I think what I would do at this point, so I'm a big fan of trying to like document what's going on. So if you're doing all this stuff and trying to document like here's here's the task or challenge I was given, here's everything I'm trying, here's how far I've gotten, here's the people that I've talked to about this, here's like how that helped me progress or did not.

when you go to your manager and they're still not helping you, like I would eventually try to have this conversation where I'm like, "Hey, back to level setting expectations, which is number one theme on this channel." Um, hey, I'm trying to like understand if I'm doing my work effectively because to me it feels like I'm not and I wanted to talk about this. I feel like I'm getting stuck a lot and like here's a couple of examples and wanted to talk through and I would go through it and you know those examples probably end off with like and that's when I came to you to ask for some help and I still feel like in the end I couldn't really get um the insight I needed. So like you know number one I like what are your thoughts on this? Number two like how can we how can I try to make this better?

like any suggestions on this. If you're not getting support when you have conversations like this. Um, could be an inexperienced manager, could be a manager that's checked out, could be could be anything. Um, but I always like I don't like saying always. My my general philosophy is like if you're going through what you feel like are the right steps, you're putting in an honest effort to do these types of things. If um if when you need support, you're not being met with anything that's helpful, it just it doesn't feel like a good spot to be. Um I think it's a very different story if you think about all these things I'm saying. and you're like go to have this conversation with your manager to be like okay like I need to get support.

If you reflect on all those things that we just talked about and you're like you know what I didn't actually I didn't actually try with the documentation or I didn't even follow up with the person when the documentation didn't work or I never reached out to to Billy or Sally like my manager said to do uh because I was nervous or something or like whatever. If you're reflecting on this and you're like, I didn't actually put in an honest effort and you're, you know, being genuine with yourself, I would say go do that first. I think it's important that you try to do your best. There there's a saying, and I'm I'm going to butcher it, but there's like a really elegant way to say it. It's like um I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get it. So, something along the lines of like uh how or how you do how you do anything is how you do everything.

Something like that. Abraham Lincoln, I don't know. Um, I think that's a really cool way to look at things because it's like if you're being honest with yourself and reflecting and being like, I didn't actually really try and I was just looking for the answer without putting in any effort. Like, I don't know, maybe maybe it's time to kind of change how you're operating. But if you are doing like everything that you think is the right thing, putting an honest effort in, trying to reach out to people, getting help, right? And you can you can confidently say at the end of the day like I tried and you know when I was given support, I acted on it and it wasn't enough or whatever or people didn't give me any support. If you can say, "I did all the things that were in my control." You go have this conversation.

I mean, if things aren't changing as a result of that, then I mean, like, I don't think you're in a good spot. I think that's what I'd have to say about that. So, um, yeah, I I would be hardressed to to think that if you tried all of those things that like no one on the team was helpful. Um because I would say even if people aren't incentivized, see I got the word now. It's it's all I want to say is incentivized. Um if there's not good like incentivization for people to help new team members uh in general, I I feel like it's going to be rare that you don't have anyone. Um I don't know. I feel like I've I've never worked at a place where there was like no one on the team that was willing to help people.

In fact, I've had almost the opposite problem where I've had people being like, "Oh, like new person, like I'm happy to like volunteer to help." And I'm in my head I'm like, "Hey, like I actually think that you need to focus on your own stuff for like for whatever reason. Like we got to get that under control before you're helping other people." but their heart was in the right place to be like, I want to help, you know, I want to on board this person. I want them to be successful. Like, I think that's awesome. It's been more of that, if anything, than people that are like, nah, screw them. Um, so I I don't know, maybe maybe my career's been a bit of an outlier, but that's been more of my experience. So again, I would be kind of shocked if not a single person was willing to help this uh you know this new person out.

But let's see, can we recap quickly? Onboarding buddies if possible. Okay, I think can't stress that enough. I think it's super helpful. Helps really helps create that safe place uh to ask questions like a lot of psychological safety. And I think the best part about that is that if you have someone who's more experienced that takes an active role in that they can lead with action like don't just wait for someone to reach out to ask questions you know reach out to them in the mornings right schedule a couple like quick chats like whatever just call them up hey how's it going cool like anything that's blocking you and like I think if you demonstrate that you are like trying to actively unblock people or answer questions, you can help reduce some of that initial barrier where people are a little hesitant to reach out. So, step one's onboarding buddies if you can.

Um, please do it. Uh, step two is like docs are a blessing and a curse. Uh, if you have really good documentation, I don't know where you work, but good for you. Uh, I'm jealous. Documentation is a ton of work. Uh, yes, maybe you have some documentation that's supposed to point you in the right direction. Um, what else? If you are getting pointed in the right direction or supposed to be and the documentation is still not helpful, I would try to take notes about what you've tried. Demonstrate that you put in an effort and then go back to the person that set you off in that direction. Ask for more clarity. Uh, keep in mind that, you know, this is kind of just a side note, but the incentivization because we got to keep saying that word now. Uh, people might not be incentivized to help others.

Uh, that might not help you in this situation, but something to think about if you're a decision maker, right? If people aren't incentivized to help other people, they will not do it. I'm not saying that you have to like, you know, attach like a dollar amount to like helping people, but I think you want to help create a culture where that's encouraged so that people do it. Uh, finally, um, when it comes to talking with your manager, keep in mind that like managers will not know everything. I do think it's important for managers to try to put you in the right direction who to contact and ultimately if they don't know that they try to get answers uh for you or with you. I think that's it. So, I uh I hope that if you're in a situation like this person that some of that was helpful.

A friendly reminder that if you have questions that you want answered, this channel is entirely driven by questions. So, uh, ask them below in the comments or if you want to submit something anonymously, just go to codemute.com. There's a check box, you check it, you write, it emails me. It's from myself, so I have no idea who you are. Um, which sucks if you don't write with detail because then I don't know how to ask you for followup, but that's how I keep you anonymous. Um, there's nothing there. Car, stop beeping. Um, yeah. I think the other thing is just like I have other YouTube channels. So if you want programming tutorials in C or working with AI tools, head over to Dev Leader. That's my main YouTube channel. Devleer Path to Tech is where you can get your resume reviewed. And the Dev Leader podcast is where I interview other software engineers.

And I also do a live stream every Monday at 7:00 p.m. Pacific, unless I'm on vacation like I was recently. then I don't because I'm not there. But almost every week I do it. So would love to see you there. There's lots of people that come over from Code Commute. Super awesome to chat with folks. So that's Devle Leadleer podcast. Thanks so much for watching. I will see you in the next video.