Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
Most recent customer sent me a laptop to VPN in with. It arrived in the post, I unloaded it and fired it up and I'm like "where's my login information? This thing's bound to your domain and my credentials aren't cached on it".
Had to send it back so they could put it on the network so I could Citrix into it to get my credentials cached. Once that was done, they had to post it back to me.
Did the unbox-and-login dance and discovered, "this has no software on it, I have no access to repositories and, even if I did, I don't have sufficient privs to install any". Called support desk and was told "you'll need to request the software you want and we'll remotely install it". They send me a link to the request system: had to make 15 discrete requests to get each of the packages installed that I sorta just assumed would have been pre-installed to it. Oh... And "remote install" was "guy sends an email, asking for contact info, arranges a time to temp-delegate admin privileges so he can RDP to the laptop over the VPN and install the software via desktop-sharing". Bonus, because each software was its own ticket, did remote install dance 15 different times (more if you count the "uh... what you installed doesn't actually work: fixitplz".
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
I should probably note that my primary duties are helping customers automate. So, when I hop on a project, there's either no automation in place or the automation that's in place needs a crap-ton of work. So, a big part of that six months is solving the various bootstrap-problems endemic to their organizations.
Python programmer, Django developer and SQL slayer. I have been programming for over 10 years; each one of those years has included a bug or 2.
Engineering manager and SRE for Envelop Risk
Python programmer, Django developer and SQL slayer. I have been programming for over 10 years; each one of those years has included a bug or 2.
Engineering manager and SRE for Envelop Risk
I completely agree - one of the reasons I've been writing articles like this and this on DEV is that at Alcumus we need some core (and perhaps less usual) principles to be understood before looking at the real code. I felt I might as well document those things as principles and then share them more widely.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
If we look from the experienced professional(6+ years of Exp) point of view, it doesn't take more then 1 month to be productive and start contributing.
But there are other factors as well, the individual will not be very comfortable with the processes and practices as well as the design of the system. I believe it takes almost 6 months to comfortable and start adopting to new environment.
It depends, another perspective is with a terrible client.
I met a client that likes to slot in extra tasks in the middle of a sprint, the productivity definitely affected from time to time. One of the funny examples is he blamed me for a malfunction feature on the brownfield project without any evidence and expected the guilty will bring more productivity. Obviously he didn't know that previously I have taught my superior how to use git blame when a colleague blames on me.
I've been in the new position for six months. The first three included Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years', and the associated away-time, it was all remote, and I really felt alone.
The current plague forced the issue of creating a home hacking shrine and made some changes with the organization as a whole, so I can say it was 4-5 months before I felt productive here.
I think I felt it earlier in my past jobs but I honestly don't remember.
I'd say 2-6 weeks before they're "positive" contributors (i.e. they are contributing more than they take in getting help from others)
But probably 2-6 months before they're at "full speed" (as much of a contributor as they are going to be; excluding personal growth which can make this hard and useless to measure)
It depends on the job. In my previous one I was productive after a week ...in my current one it took nearly 3 months, but that is because you need to have an understanding of telco, which not everyone has knowledge of.
Top comments (49)
It depends on when you receive your laptop!
Can't tell if you're joking, but it took me a month to get my laptop when I worked at McAfee. Air coding lol.
Took me nearly a week at my first job! 🤷
Current job is the only place I've had a brand new machine... I love it 😍
Or when you get your local environment finally set up
Cannot agree more.
Most recent customer sent me a laptop to VPN in with. It arrived in the post, I unloaded it and fired it up and I'm like "where's my login information? This thing's bound to your domain and my credentials aren't cached on it".
Had to send it back so they could put it on the network so I could Citrix into it to get my credentials cached. Once that was done, they had to post it back to me.
Did the unbox-and-login dance and discovered, "this has no software on it, I have no access to repositories and, even if I did, I don't have sufficient privs to install any". Called support desk and was told "you'll need to request the software you want and we'll remotely install it". They send me a link to the request system: had to make 15 discrete requests to get each of the packages installed that I sorta just assumed would have been pre-installed to it. Oh... And "remote install" was "guy sends an email, asking for contact info, arranges a time to temp-delegate admin privileges so he can RDP to the laptop over the VPN and install the software via desktop-sharing". Bonus, because each software was its own ticket, did remote install dance 15 different times (more if you count the "uh... what you installed doesn't actually work: fixitplz".
I should probably note that my primary duties are helping customers automate. So, when I hop on a project, there's either no automation in place or the automation that's in place needs a crap-ton of work. So, a big part of that six months is solving the various bootstrap-problems endemic to their organizations.
This sounds like hell
lol.... due to covid situation most of company failed to deliver kind of premises.
In my second job I actually got fed up of waiting, went to the local pcworld and bought one, expensing it.
Lol, did you get reimbursed?
Yeah, I expensed the machine back to the company. They didn't mind doing that, they didn't have a "proper" IT function.
Onboarding documentation can make a huge difference. I had a discussion post about this back in 2018. Lots of good answers in there.
What is your on-boarding process at your company?
Nick Taylor (he/him) ・ Apr 22 '18 ・ 1 min read
I completely agree - one of the reasons I've been writing articles like this and this on DEV is that at Alcumus we need some core (and perhaps less usual) principles to be understood before looking at the real code. I felt I might as well document those things as principles and then share them more widely.
What is this "documentation" you speak of?
If the product is simple and the company is an early-stage startup, a week or two, maybe a month depending on your experience.
If the product is complex in an industry you know little about, you're going to take several months to ramp up no matter your experience level.
I'd typically say about a month. They need time to settle in, get used to the working processes, get used to the systems in place, etc.
(Unless you're like me and thrown in the deep end day 1 - haha).
If we look from the experienced professional(6+ years of Exp) point of view, it doesn't take more then 1 month to be productive and start contributing.
But there are other factors as well, the individual will not be very comfortable with the processes and practices as well as the design of the system. I believe it takes almost 6 months to comfortable and start adopting to new environment.
It depends, another perspective is with a terrible client.
I met a client that likes to slot in extra tasks in the middle of a sprint, the productivity definitely affected from time to time. One of the funny examples is he blamed me for a malfunction feature on the brownfield project without any evidence and expected the guilty will bring more productivity. Obviously he didn't know that previously I have taught my superior how to use
git blamewhen a colleague blames on me.you know, it's depends on many factors. like your responsibility, workloads, position etc etc.
I've been in the new position for six months. The first three included Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years', and the associated away-time, it was all remote, and I really felt alone.
The current plague forced the issue of creating a home hacking shrine and made some changes with the organization as a whole, so I can say it was 4-5 months before I felt productive here.
I think I felt it earlier in my past jobs but I honestly don't remember.
I'd say 2-6 weeks before they're "positive" contributors (i.e. they are contributing more than they take in getting help from others)
But probably 2-6 months before they're at "full speed" (as much of a contributor as they are going to be; excluding personal growth which can make this hard and useless to measure)
It depends on the job. In my previous one I was productive after a week ...in my current one it took nearly 3 months, but that is because you need to have an understanding of telco, which not everyone has knowledge of.