I think most technical onboarding experiences throughout my career have looked something like:
- Receive a company laptop
- Clone the code repository
- Find the latest person who's been through the painful process of setting up a local environment, and hope that they remember what they're doing, especially when trying to attempt to debug the inevitable errors
A poor onboarding process can lead to confusion and frustration, setting the wrong tone for a developer's experience at your company. On the other hand, a well-structured onboarding process ensures they start with clarity and confidence. At Flare, I believe we've found the key to effective onboarding: structured guidance, hands-on experience, and continuous support. And to be honest, it's nothing complicated. These small investments will go a long way to get developers started on the right foot.
The Cost of Poor Onboarding
Hiring great developers is hard. Once you hire someone who's excited to get started, the last thing you want to do is to be a hurdle to their momentum.
- Long ramp-up times – New hires spend weeks or months just figuring out where things are and how to get started.
- Frustration and disengagement – Without clear guidance, new developers can feel lost or undervalued.
- Higher turnover – If onboarding is disorganized, developers may leave before they ever hit their stride.
- Team slowdowns – A poorly onboarded developer pulls others away from their work for constant questions and troubleshooting.
On the flip side, a strong onboarding process accelerates learning, boosts confidence, and makes developers feel like they belong.
What Makes a Great Developer Onboarding Experience?
A great onboarding process goes beyond just documentation and checklists. Here’s what truly makes a difference:
1. Clear Expectations from Day One
Developers should know exactly what’s expected of them, what success looks like, and how they’ll get there. A structured onboarding plan with milestones helps keep everything on track. At Flare, since we work with Shape Up cycles, new developers typically follow a specific learning curve. You spend one cycle onboarding and learning, you spend one cycle executing and contributing within a team, and finally you are ready to lead a cycle and champion a project.
2. Easy Access to Tools and Information
Nothing slows down a new hire like missing credentials or outdated documentation. We make sure to automate setup where possible and ensure essential resources (like API keys, test environments, and architecture diagrams) are easy to find. As part of our onboarding, the new hire updates the onboarding documents to ensure they remain accurate and relevant. This ensures that they are always up-to-date, and free of any ambiguity.
3. Hands-on Learning and Small Wins
Instead of drowning developers in documentation, we let them start with small, meaningful tasks. Fixing a minor bug or improving documentation in their first week builds confidence and helps them understand the codebase faster. The way we do this at Flare is with something we call quests, which are sample tasks that everyone does (ex: change the color of a button in the UI, implement a new API listing feature flags). This way you can get relevant comments from everyone on the team, while also making sure your development setup functions correctly in a controlled environment.
4. Mentorship and Support
Assigning a buddy or mentor gives new hires a go-to person for questions and guidance. This helps them integrate socially and technically into the team more smoothly. On top of the buddy system, we make sure new developers spend a day shadowing each member of the team during their second week. This gives them exposure to different workflows, coding styles, and problem-solving approaches, helping them understand how various parts of the team collaborate and function together.
5. Team and Culture Integration
Onboarding isn’t just about code. We want to help new developers connect with their team, understand the company’s culture, and feel like they belong. Casual introductions, team lunches, and pairing sessions make a big difference. We tend to group new hires in cohorts, and we plan a welcome lunch, as well as introductions during the weekly company all-hands.
The Payoff: Faster, Happier, and More Effective Teams
Investing in great onboarding isn’t just about making new hires feel good, it’s about making your entire team more effective. Developers ramp up faster, contribute sooner, and stay longer. A smooth onboarding experience signals that your company values its people and sets them up for success from day one.
If you want a stronger, more engaged engineering team, start with how you welcome them. Investing in great onboarding leads to faster productivity, higher retention, and a more cohesive team. Take the time to refine your process, and you’ll see the impact in every aspect of your development culture. Onboarding isn’t just the first step, it’s the foundation for everything that follows.
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