Onboarding

This repo defines the Hypothesis new engineer onboarding process:

• Issue templates in this repo help to create the onboarding issues for each new engineer
• Project boards in this repo keep track of each new engineer's onboarding progress
• The docs folder in this repo contains the documentation and guides that a new engineer will need: our architecture, core practices, etc
• To report a problem or suggest an improvement to the onboarding process open an issue or create a pull request

Creating an onboarding project for a new engineer

Before a new engineer's first day we need to create a GitHub project for their onboarding. To create an onboarding project:

1. Create a new project in the Hypothesis organization. Select the Board layout for this new project.

2. Give the new project a title/name like @seanh Onboarding.

3. Add the new project to this onboarding repo for quick access: go to the onboarding repo's Projects tab and use the Add project button.

4. Create issues in the onboarding repo and add them to the project:

   1. Go to the onboarding repo's new issue page and create an issue from one of the templates or use the Open a blank issue link:

      

   2. Use the Assignees section in the issue's sidebar to assign the issue to the new engineer and the Projects section to add the issue to the onboarding project you created for the new engineer:

      

   3. Repeat until you've finished adding an initial set of issues

We can vary the onboarding tasks from one new engineer to the next

The idea is to populate each new engineer's project with a sequence of issues created from the templates provided. We can vary the tasks from one new engineer to the next:

• You don't have to pre-populate the whole project at the start, you can add more issues later
• You don't have to use all of the issue templates
• You don't have to use the issue templates in the suggested order
• After creating an issue from a template you can edit the issue
• You can use the Open a blank issue link to create an issue without using a template

We can add other issues to an onboarding project

You should also add issues from other repos to an engineer's onboarding project. The issue templates aren't meant to be all a new engineer does during their onboarding time. We don't expect them to set up their development environment, write one PR, review one PR, and then find themselves on-call! The idea is that they'll also be assigned other tasks during their onboarding time. For example:

• When the new engineer has deployed their first PR they can close their Make your first pull request issue.
• They're now capable of making pull requests to fix simple issues, getting them approved, and deploying them, so their manager and buddy can help them find several more issues to fix with PRs.
• At some point the engineer decides, along with their buddy and manager, that they're ready to move on to the next phase of onboarding (say: handling Dependabot PRs).
• When they've deployed their first batch of Dependabot PRs the engineer can close their Deploy your first batch of Dependabot PRs issue.
• They're now capable of handling Dependabot PRs and can handle their share of those from now on.
• And so on