Automate New Hire Onboarding

Onboard orchestrates the complete onboarding experience for a new team member, from pre-arrival preparation through the first 90 days, creating a customized plan based on role, seniority, location and team structure. It parses $ARGUMENTS for role details, start date, location (remote/hybrid/on-site), technical requirements, team context and any fast-track needs.

Pre-onboarding preparation covers account and access setup (email, Slack, GitHub, AWS, SSO/2FA, hardware shipping), documentation preparation (a role-specific package, updated org chart, a personalized checklist, welcome videos), and workspace configuration (remote stipend verification or desk/badge assignment). Day 1 splits into a morning of welcome and orientation (a 30-minute manager 1:1, a 45-minute culture overview, team introductions), an afternoon of technical setup (IT-guided laptop configuration, dev environment, password manager, Slack), and administrative completion (HR paperwork, benefits, directory photo).

Week 1 covers codebase immersion - a repository walkthrough with the tech lead, the branching strategy and code-style conventions, the PR process and CI/CD pipeline, and a first contribution: a "good first issue," a pair-programming session, and a first PR submitted with buddy guidance. Development environment setup lists local tooling (IDE, linters, debugger, git/SSH config), service access (read-only DB, API keys via a secrets manager, staging access, wiki edit rights), and toolchain mastery (build tools, containers, testing framework, security scanning).

Team integration runs a buddy system: a dedicated buddy for 30 days, daily 15-minute check-ins in week one, weekly syncs after, with a documented buddy responsibility matrix - week 1 daily at 2 hours/day, weeks 2-3 three times a week at 1 hour/day, week 4 twice a week, weeks 5-8 weekly, weeks 9-12 bi-weekly transitioning to mentorship. It also covers shadowing team ceremonies, 1:1s with each team member, cross-functional introductions, and communication norms (Slack etiquette, async expectations, time-zone core hours, escalation paths).

Learning resources cover a technical learning path (courses, internal tech talks, sandboxes), product knowledge (demos, personas, roadmap), and knowledge management (documentation guidelines, ADR process). Milestones are tracked at 30 days (mandatory training complete, 3+ PRs merged, one process documented, a 10-minute team presentation), 60 days (own a small feature end-to-end, shadow on-call, contribute to a design discussion), and 90 days (independent feature delivery, active code review, mentor a newer hire, propose a process improvement, and a performance review confirming the permanent role). Feedback loops include weekly 5-question pulse surveys, buddy feedback forms, and onboarding metrics such as time to first commit, time to first production deploy, and team-integration satisfaction scores, feeding quarterly onboarding retrospectives.

Three worked example plans are included: a Software Engineer 30/60/90-day plan with day-by-day pre-start and week-one checklists; a Remote Employee plan for a distributed team, covering a home-office stipend, timezone-friendly scheduling and async communication norms; and an accelerated Senior/Lead Engineer plan that compresses architecture deep-dives, postmortem review and a first architectural proposal into four weeks. A reference Complete Day 1 Checklist breaks the day into a morning and afternoon block with timed items down to a 10-minute feedback survey.

Use it for onboard tasks and workflows needing guidance, best practices or checklists - planning or running a new hire's onboarding from pre-arrival through a 90-day review, for an individual contributor, a remote hire, or an accelerated senior/lead track. Do not use it for tasks unrelated to onboarding, or when a different domain or tool fits better.

Named tools include GitHub, Slack, Jira and AWS for account provisioning, a secrets manager for API keys, and a documentation wiki for knowledge management.

It suits managers, onboarding leads or buddies running structured onboarding for a new software engineer, a remote/distributed hire, or a senior or lead engineer who needs to ramp up faster than a standard plan allows.