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Evie
Evie

Posted on

How do you get new starters acquainted with your codebase?

Do you often have new starters join the team?

How do you help them get a project up and running on their machine for the first time?

I've met some teams that use a fully automated process (e.g one shell script), and others that use a mixture of automated steps and manual steps.

Happy Friday!

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xanderyzwich profile image
Corey McCarty

This is probably a worst case scenario for most people. Our team was joined from two teams around a year ago, and immediately after that we were moved to another manager that did not work to form us into a cohesive team. We still have two groups of people with SOME knowledge about half of the applications, but nobody knows about them all. Add to this that all of our members are less than two years with the team and our data model is all hierarchical of undefined depth. The docs are an odd combination of non-existed and unorganized. This perfect storm means that when new people join they just have to grab a piece that needs attention and ask questions where they come across them. While our documentation and introduction process is abysmal, once you get into it you become a bit of a subject matter expert nearly immediately which brings a tremendous amount of identity.

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evieskinner18 profile image
Evie

'our documentation and introduction process is abysmal' 😂 Steady on don't make it too easy for the juniors!

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xanderyzwich profile image
Corey McCarty

I only joined the group last July! I'm suffering too!

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evieskinner18 profile image
Evie

Oh no you poor things. Probably a good time to suggest some improvements to your team?