Tag: ramping up

How to Advance Your Career By Becoming an ‘Idea Machine’

I love James Altucher.  In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s an investor, writer, and entrepreneur.  He has a popular blog, podcast, and a bunch of books.  You can find all his material here:  www.jamesaltucher.com

[Photo: James Altucher, source: www.jamesaltucher.com]

One of James’ most popular books, and my personal favorite, is called “Choose Yourself:  Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream”.  In this book he talks about how the nature of employment is changing, and how we all need to become entrepreneurs.  There are several principles that he advocates that I’ve started to utilize at work and have noticed a huge change.  All software managers, really anyone in a leadership position, can benefit from the advice in this book and put it to immediate use.  I highly recommend you check the book out for yourself.  I also recommend you check out his podcast where he interviews various celebrities (from rappers to venture capitalists to authors).

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When ramping up new engineers, focus on the product!

Onboarding-Sign

When ramping new hires up, it’s very tempting to quickly throw them into the fire, fix bugs, start building features, etc.  After they’ve completed their orientation and filled out their paperwork, what better way for them to learn the system?

Stop!

It’s critically important that your engineers know how the business operates, who the customers are, their needs, and how your product fills that need.

The company I currently work for provides a SaaS offering that is VERY workflow intensive.  We have 20+ roles in the system with around 5 major different personas, across 3 different applications.  I made the mistake in the first paragraph and am now regretting it.  We were under high growth at the time, hiring as fast as we could, and our backlog was growing.

Now, these engineers have been on board for several months and know nothing about the product.  When building new features, they don’t have the customer in mind.

Bottom line, when onboarding new employees focus on the product and end users first, THEN have them learn the code.  This may take a week or more, depending on your product, but it will pay dividends down the road.