July 2020 Summaries

Creating effective code tutorials is a challenging but valuable task that enhances onboarding programs and internal knowledge sharing by focusing on essential elements such as clarity, relevance, and practicality. Tutorials should concentrate on specific parts of the codebase that new engineers need to understand, emphasizing the underlying logic and processes rather than just presenting solutions. Enabling a hands-on, interactive learning experience through sandbox environments can foster a deeper comprehension of the codebase. Additionally, maintaining up-to-date content is crucial to prevent misunderstandings and build trust among engineers. While developing and sustaining these tutorials requires effort, the benefits of improved onboarding and continuous feedback can significantly contribute to a team's success.

Swimm, founded in October 2019 by Oren Toledano and his co-founders, is a tool designed to streamline the onboarding process for engineers by integrating training directly into the development environment, offering an alternative to the traditional "sink or swim" method. Recognizing the persistent challenges in the tech industry, such as the shortage of skilled professionals and prolonged ramp-up times even for qualified engineers, the Swimm team aims to provide a more empowering and independent onboarding experience. Launched during the Covid-19 pandemic, Swimm has been tested on its own team, demonstrating its potential to facilitate remote onboarding effectively. With its ongoing pilot phase involving several design partners, Swimm is poised to become a widely accessible self-service tool, reflecting a commitment to enhancing the onboarding experience and fostering greater success and satisfaction among developers.

Swimm is launching a pilot program called "Swimminars" to promote continuous learning and professional development among engineers while maintaining productivity. The initiative involves bi-weekly sessions where an engineer explores a new technological topic and presents their findings to the team, fostering innovation and collaboration. Inspired by Aidoc's "Deep Snips," Swimm aims to create a culture of ongoing education and idea exchange, integrating new insights into their products. The sessions are divided into technical overviews and discussions on practical applications, prioritizing learning time despite the demands of a startup environment. While acknowledging potential challenges, the initiative is expected to enhance team expertise, presentation skills, and product development. Omer Rosenbaum, CTO and Co-founder, will kick off the first Swimminar on git internals, with plans to share experiences and outcomes in future updates.

The text explores the challenges faced by mentors during the engineer onboarding process, often overlooked in favor of focusing on new hires. It highlights the "Onboardee Bias," where mentors, despite being experienced engineers, may struggle with time constraints, inadequate documentation, and a lack of specific mentorship skills, which can hinder effective onboarding. The absence of a comprehensive onboarding plan for new hires, particularly regarding codebase integration and best practices, can lead to issues such as procrastination, system malfunctions, and ineffective "sink or swim" approaches. To address these issues, the text suggests acknowledging the problem, learning from past experiences, and fostering a culture of knowledge sharing, ultimately equipping mentors with the necessary tools and skills.

The article highlights the importance of an efficient onboarding process for software engineers, emphasizing that a well-executed onboarding program can significantly enhance new hires' ability to solve issues and merge pull requests quickly. It outlines the challenges of remote onboarding and shares insights from a recent expansion of an engineering team, focusing on the need for a streamlined set of coding tasks and independent learning to familiarize new hires with the codebase. The process involved setting up the development environment in advance, providing business context through introductory sessions, and using a hands-on code exploration methodology with automated guidance. Regular feedback was collected to optimize the onboarding process, ensuring new engineers could contribute effectively from the start. The approach also emphasized the importance of making new hires feel part of the team, even when working remotely, by engaging them in daily touchpoints and knowledge-sharing activities. Additionally, the article underscores the significance of using tools like Swimm, which offers automated insights and hints, to enhance the onboarding experience by allowing engineers to contribute to the codebase more efficiently.