A good onboarding gets a new engineer productive and confident quickly, while making them feel welcome. Poor onboarding wastes weeks and signals "you're on your own." A little structure pays off hugely.
An onboarding checklist
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WEEK 1 — environment runs, first tiny PR merged, knows who's who
WEEK 2-3 — owns a small real task end to end
MONTH 1 — comfortable in the core codebase and workflow
MONTH 2-3 — contributing independently on normal work
Provide: a buddy, a written setup guide, a starter task list,
and a clear "who to ask about what" map.