Remote onboarding, written for the person who has just joined
Nobody can see that you are stuck
You have just started, remotely. Almost everything written about onboarding is addressed to your employer, and most of it asks them to do something. These fifty notes are for you, and nothing in them needs anybody's permission: no process to change, no mentor to request, no meeting to move.
When a new employee is learning an unfamiliar workflow, employee monitoring software can show where time is going before a manager assumes that a slow start is an effort problem.
For a separate career or employment reference, consult Indeed.
What the people on this page had to find out, and where from
Which repository is the real one
you asked1Four days of reading the wrong one before it occurred to you to ask
Where the on-call rota lives
written down2In the handbook, which nobody had mentioned
That the design review is where decisions actually happen
worked out8Noticed because nothing agreed anywhere else survived it
three things you had to know · nobody told you any of them · the median arrived in week 2 · all three you went and got
Three of the fourteen things one person had to find out in their first twelve weeks, and the week each of them arrived.
Nothing here is a benchmark. Every figure on this site is one person's record of their own first twelve weeks, written down at the time, and the only claim made for it is that it happened. Nothing in this collection is legal or employment advice: what a probation period means, what an employer may require of somebody and how any of it is assessed differ by jurisdiction and by contract, and they change.
Six parts, in the order the weeks arrive
Every note belongs to one of them. The line at the foot of each card is what that part cost one person in their first twelve weeks, stated as a thing that happened rather than as a principle.
Before you start
Before you start
The weeks between signing and your first day are yours, and almost nothing you can do with them requires anybody's cooperation.
a fortnight nobody is using
The first week
The first week
Nobody can see that you are stuck, nothing replaces being noticed, and the habits that substitute for it all have to be started deliberately.
fourteen hours, twenty minutes of answers
Who is who
Who is who
The organisation chart records reporting lines accurately and tells you almost nothing about who you will actually need.
four of ten, never introduced
Asking
Asking
Twenty minutes of looking, then a question with what you tried in it, sent to a channel rather than to a person.
twenty-six hours against forty-two minutes
First work
Your first work
Finish something small in week three. The point is not the output; it is everything you are forced to learn in order to get it finished.
one small thing, finished in week three
Ninety days
The first ninety days
The standard you are assessed against is almost never written down, and the window in which you can see the place clearly closes at about week eight.
sixty-six hours, thirty-one of them in month one
One person's first twelve weeks, counted
Three panels, all kept by the same person over the same twelve weeks, and all of them written down at the time rather than remembered afterwards. Nothing here is a benchmark: it is one record, and the only claim made for it is that it happened.
Fourteen things you had to know, and where each of them came from
Which repository is the real one
you asked1Four days of reading the wrong one before it occurred to you to ask
Where the on-call rota lives
written down2In the handbook, which nobody had mentioned
How to get a staging database password
you asked2The answer was one sentence and had no owner
That your manager prefers a written update on Mondays
told3Said in passing, in week three, and would have been useful in week one
How expenses are claimed
written down4Found by searching for a word you guessed at
Who signs off a schema change
you asked4Three people were asked before the right one
That Thursday standup is optional
told5Somebody noticed you were always there and said so
Which of the two deploy guides is current
worked out6Decided by looking at which one matched the actual scripts
That nobody reads the team channel after 15:00
worked out7Learned from two unanswered afternoons
fourteen things you had to know · two of them somebody told you · the median arrived in week 4 · the other twelve you went and got
A fifteenth line was given to this panel and is not drawn. Its source could not be read, and the whole of this sign is the question of where knowledge came from — a row with an unreadable source would shift the band at the foot of it to nowhere in particular. +5 further lines not shown.
Nine occasions of being stuck, and how long you sat on each before asking
The staging database would not take your password
3 hanswer: 4 minYou waited because you could not tell whose job it was. The answer was a shared note you had not been sent
The test suite failed only on your machine
6 hanswer: 12 minYou waited because you assumed it was something you had done wrong. It was a missing environment variable and everybody had hit it
You could not find the deploy runbook
1.5 hanswer: 2 minYou waited because it felt like something you were supposed to know already.
Nobody had given you access to the billing dashboard
5 hanswer: 3 minYou waited because you did not want to look as though you were chasing. Access took the other person about three minutes to grant
The specification contradicted the drawing
2 hanswer: 15 minYou waited because you thought you had misread it. You had not, and the drawing was two revisions old
You did not know which branch to start from
4 hanswer: 2 minYou waited because everybody else seemed busy.
A meeting invitation arrived with no agenda
2.5 hanswer: 3 minYou waited because asking felt like criticising the organiser. The organiser had meant to attach it and was glad to be asked
The build broke after your first commit
1 hanswer: 20 minYou waited because you wanted to fix it yourself first. A reasonable instinct, and it cost an hour
You could not tell who owned the pricing table
6 hanswer: 6 minYou waited because the org chart did not say and you did not want to guess wrong. Two of the three people you eventually asked did not know either
nine occasions · 31 hours spent stuck · 67 minutes of answers · the longest single wait was 6 hours
Two further lines were given to this panel and are not drawn. In one, the answer took longer than the wait did, so waiting was not what cost anything. In the other no reason for waiting is stated, and this sign exists to collect the reasons: without one, the line says only that somebody waited.
The people you were introduced to, and the people you turned out to need
Introduced, and never needed · 3
- The head of people — met in week 1
- A director from another division — met in week 1
- A finance manager — met in week 1
Introduced, and needed · 3
- Your own manager — met in before you started; needed in week 1
- The other two people on your team — met in week 1; needed in week 1
- The designer on the adjacent product — met in week 2; needed in week 6
Needed, and never introduced · 4
- The person who runs the release — needed in week 2. Found by reading the channel history
- Whoever owns the billing dashboard — needed in week 3. Found by asking in a channel and waiting two days
- The person who actually approves schema changes — needed in week 4. Found on the fourth attempt, after asking three wrong people
ten people · six you were introduced to · seven you actually needed · four you had to find yourself
An eleventh line was given to this panel and is not drawn. That person was neither introduced nor needed, and a row like that only inflates the denominator. Roles are named here and people are not: the record this comes from named nobody, which is the only responsible way to keep one. +1 further person not shown.
01 / 06a fortnight nobody is using
Before you start
The weeks between signing and your first day are yours, and almost nothing you can do with them requires anybody's cooperation.
02 / 06fourteen hours, twenty minutes of answers
The first week
Nobody can see that you are stuck, nothing replaces being noticed, and the habits that substitute for it all have to be started deliberately.
03 / 06four of ten, never introduced
Who is who
The organisation chart records reporting lines accurately and tells you almost nothing about who you will actually need.
04 / 06twenty-six hours against forty-two minutes
Asking
Twenty minutes of looking, then a question with what you tried in it, sent to a channel rather than to a person.
05 / 06one small thing, finished in week three
Your first work
Finish something small in week three. The point is not the output; it is everything you are forced to learn in order to get it finished.
06 / 06sixty-six hours, thirty-one of them in month one
The first ninety days
The standard you are assessed against is almost never written down, and the window in which you can see the place clearly closes at about week eight.
The short version
Ask sooner than feels comfortable, because nobody can see that you are waiting
In an office somebody would have noticed you staring at the same screen for three hours. Remotely nobody notices anything, and the silence that protects you from looking foolish is the same silence that keeps anybody from helping. The thirty-one hours in the panel above were spent by one person in twelve weeks, and the answers they were waiting for took sixty-seven minutes in total.
Workplace tool guides
Make the first weeks easier to understand
Three independently structured comparisons for remote onboarding, knowledge transfer, and workforce operations.