Onboarding Q&A and Videos

I'm primarily on the back-end, but I've been put on a lot of other stacks. I've worked with www and Bloks and now I need to pick up native Android to debug a deep link issue.

I'm having a hard time with the Android issue. I took a long time just setting up the environment, choosing between VSCode, Android Studio, and OnDemand. I'm now working with adb, which I don't really understand as it's completely new to me. There's not a lot of documentation for my problem area, and it's been rough.

More broadly speaking, how can I do better in these situations and pick up new stacks faster?

Joining a new team/vertical with the company, I often feel intimidated with the sheer expanse of domain knowledge to be grasped. Given that it takes time, what are the best ways to approach it, so that you are the most effective.

I'm new to the team, and I want to make an impact quickly. How can I quickly gain respect of people on the team? Are there certain things I should do as I act/react to other people?

We have a sprint planning session every two weeks where epic owners create tickets and they are presented to people. Whoever is interested in whatever tickets, they assign it to themselves.

Everyone has 10 story points worth of tasks where 1 story point is one day’s work. When these tickets are created, the creator assigns an estimated story point value based on their judgement of the complexity of the ticket.

But sometimes, the task can be more complex than estimated and it might spill over.

I tend to take 10 points worth of tasks but definitely 1/2 points get spilled over to the next sprint because of unplanned delays while finishing them and my own inefficiency/ procrastination.

I have been given the feedback that I tend to overcommit and it would be better if I brought it up earlier in daily stand ups in case some tasks are taking more time than usual. This will enable others to pick up some other task on my board in case they are done with theirs.

I do see my inability to complete the 10 points as a personal failure even if no one explicitly points it out or cares about it. Most of my team mates tend to get them done though. I am 6 months in the team and the rest have been there for 2-3 years at least. I want to get better at planning and completing my sprint tasks. How do I approach this problem?

Starting my first day and I was assigned an onboarding buddy. I was wondering what are some of the main questions I should ask.

Some questions I have asked:

1. Wiki on how to set up dev environment
2. Info about all meetings that I was invited to
3. More info about what our team does?

I'm wondering if there are any other main ones I should be asking or is it just ask as they come along?

My whole team is engaged in a design exercise for the system we will build in subsequent quarters. Since I joined 2 months ago, I don’t feel I’m able to meaningfully contribute. I also feel weak with system design questions during interviews. How can I improve here?

I'm a relatively new engineer at Twitter, so I know that I'm in a "golden period" where I can ask whatever "stupid" questions I want and I won't be judged as much. I ask a good amount of questions and follow the habit of doing 10-15 minutes of research before asking questions, but sometimes I do spend too much time on research and overall, I feel like I can put myself out there more to learn even more from others.

I think this stems from some gaps I have in my confidence, particularly around my ability to communicate in an impactful way. How can I overcome this issue and get the maximum amount of value learning from my teammates?

I'm a relatively new engineer at Salesforce (been here just ~4 months), and I'm having trouble clearly understanding my expectations.

What's the ideal ramp-up/onboarding strategy for a Staff engineer at a Big Tech company like Salesforce; in particular, what should the first 3-6 months look like? Are there any specific artifacts you would expect such an engineer to have produced during this time?

I'm thinking to glance over some materials about the tech stack that the new team uses before joining them. What are some other ways to best prepare for the new team so that my onboarding process can be as smooth as possible and start performing at my level or higher?