How can I best spend my time ramping up?
I'm in the onboarding phase. I was assigned a starter task and have been working on it. I haven’t done the work of asking questions on design choices (that part is pending).
I want to be ramped up after a week and am wondering how to spend the time. Should I go in-depth on overall architecture? Or spend time working on the codebase? Or is there something else I should do?
Discussion
(2 comments)- 22 years agoRobinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal
- Focus on crushing your starter task and picking up as many small wins as you can.
- I wouldn't view asking questions on design choices as a substantial supplemental task: I think it should be a behavior that's naturally weaved in as you're processing code. If you have questions on why things are written in a certain way, ask your team immediately!
- Ramp-up isn't a binary process: It's a big spectrum. Of course, as a mid-level engineer, you need to get good productivity quickly and do the bulk of your ramping up within the first 1-2 months. But I think reaching true 100% productivity can take 3-6 months. Just something to keep in mind - Don't be too hard on yourself if you're still missing things 3 months in!
- I don't expect mid-level engineers to have a huge impact on technical direction, especially newer ones on a team. I would focus on building a very strong proficiency with the codebase. Landing new high-quality code into your team's codebase quickly should feel like breathing to you within the next month or so.
Zooming out, I recommend talking more with your manager and TL to figure out what the longer-term horizons are for you. From there, you can work backwards on what's best for you to do. For example, let's say the plan for your next 3 months is to deliver a big project in a specific part of the codebase. You can start preparing for that now by finding relevant stakeholders in that codebase, going through that code, etc.
Lastly, I recommend going through this onboarding checklist I shared with a new engineer that started at Google: "Started my 1st FTE SWE job and been on my team for just a few weeks - What should I do?". I think a lot of it can apply to your situation as well.
If you want to go super deep, check out our onboarding course: The Complete Onboarding Guide For Software Engineers
- 017 days agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
I want to be ramped up after a week
Where did you get this timeline from? One thing I'd do is be very explicit with your manager your ramp up timeline and how that will be measured.
Ideally, this is something you can add (or your manager can add) into the onboarding doc, as I talk about in this lesson: Create An Onboarding Doc
How you spend your time: code, meetings, 1:1s, design docs, etc will depend very much on your team, level, etc.
