The First 30 Days of Engineering Onboarding
February 19, 2026
- teams
- onboarding
- engineering-management
Onboarding is your first delivery project with every new hire.
Week-by-week intent
Week 1: context and architecture.
Week 2: first small production change.
Week 3: own a scoped task end to end.
Week 4: present learnings and propose one improvement.
Non-negotiables
- A named onboarding owner.
- A starter backlog with real tickets.
- A decision log to explain why things exist.
Good onboarding is measurable: time to first merged PR, first incident understanding, and first independent delivery.