- Define and agree on the purpose of the one on one
- Define the topics to be discussed prior to meeting
- Track and update metrics that you care about every time you meet
- e.g., Predictability, Ownership, Purpose, Progress, Belonging
- Discuss the status of those metrics if necessary
- Write in a shared document (between the two of you) what is discussed
- If any action items are defined during those meetings, use a task tracking system to keep each other accountable
- Always define a deadline on tasks to indicate when the task should be revisited
- Avoid using one on one for status updates
The onboarding process described here is specific to a software engineer joining a tech company. While some/most of the items may still apply to any job where you mainly work from a computer, the assumption will be that you develop software as an individual contributor.
- Setup laptop
- Access to slack
- Access to zoom
- Setup calendar reminders
- Initial meeting with buddy
- Access to git central repository
- Installation of development tools/languages
- Request software licenses
- Access to CI/CD
- Find where task management is done
- Find the documentation to build projects
- Connect 1 on 1 with each member of the team
- Meet with manager 1 on 1
- Define a 30-60-90 days plan with manager
- Verify access to various systems (SSO, code repository, insurance company, payroll company, etc.)
- End of week meeting with buddy
- Setup and run the one step build process
- Determine how are features/tasks prioritized, who prioritizes features/tasks
- Review the team documentation
- Review team practices/processes documentation (code style, code review, standups, planning, retrospective, demos)
- Review common vocabulary, terminology, glossary documents
- First PR + code review
- Review the career ladder of the position
- Review user definition, use cases, requirements
- Read prior team meetings notes
- Identify how deployments are done
- Review the team roadmap
- Determine where I can have the biggest impact
- Determine a timeline where I'll have reached my 80/20 at the company
- Determine the maturity of existing projects
- Determine how fast can we iterate on certain aspects given the team/company composition
- Identify the core/principal/staff contributors and their contributions
- Review the architecture of the system
- Review the database architecture
- Learn about "how we got to this point"
- Determine whether the product is a monolith or micro-services
- Identify which (3rd party) tools are used by the team/company
- Determine the portfolio of STARS situations of the team/company
- Determine a rough estimate of the number of people in the different organizations
- Connect 1 on 1 with important collaborator in other teams
- End of first month meeting with buddy
- First month performance review with manager
- Informal 360-degree review with manager and peers on adaptation
- Month 1 job satisfaction review
- Team interaction diagram
- Month 2 job satisfaction review
- Month 3 job satisfaction review
- Decide what habit you want to have and record why you want this habit
- Start with the smallest amount of effort possible
- Increase the amount of effort regularly until you reach the desired amount of regular effort
- Track your habit in a habit recording system such as Loop Habit Tracker
- Review on a regular basis (monthly) whether you want to keep this habit or not
- If you decide not to keep the habit, record why you decided to drop the habit such that if you decide to pick it up again, you can determine whether you might end up dropping it again.
- It's not a problem if you miss doing your habit, just make sure to do it when you're supposed to
- Daily planning
- Daily review
- Eat/Drink
- Shower
- Wash dishes
- Cook
- Exercise
- Read
- Watch TV shows
- Floss
- Brush teeth
- Weekly planning
- Weekly review
- Wash clothes
- Clean apartment
- Buy groceries
- Monthly planning
- Monthly review
- Pay bills
- Yearly planning
- Year review
- Daily planning at 10 am
- Weekly planning on Mondays
- Monthly planning on the first of the month
- Pay credit card on the first of the month
- Google Keep
- Google Calendar
- Google Mail
- Slack
- Daylio
- Notion