Aka "hands off management", "or absentee boss" or "sink or swim". Love it! Let me float an idea though, I might be dreaming here, but what if there was a better way than just dumping people and resources and hoping for it to work?
How about you encourage the team to actively monitor where onboarding takes time, year by year, learn from that, make onboarding materials which encompass institutional knowledge, and make the process as much self serve as possible?
Or assigning a "buddy/mentor" like persona that is responsible for this specific onboarding, so the rest of the team don't get distracted + the expectations on delivery are lowered for the "buddy"?
> it takes that is in their capacity to move the project forward
It takes quiet and uninterrupted work and focus time, and spending effort on making onboarding as smooth as possible. Just hoping your devs will do all the work of onboarding + their own work, and you doing nothing, that's just...what I expected I guess.
you are reading way to much into what i said. nothing what you are suggesting has anything to do with it. we all have work todo and we all need to contribute to training the new hires in some form. this has nothing to do with hands off management. i am not saying: here is the newbie, get them up to speed, but: we hired someone new, and we need to figure out the best approach to get them integrated. for me that includes that they work with everyone on the team for some time. including me if i am still involved in the development myself. i'll do my part of the onboarding and everyone else will do theirs.
being that buddy/mentor is part of your job, and i expect everyone on the team including me to be able to take on that role as the situation demands.
moving the project forward takes quiet and uninterrupted work and focus time
and it takes making sure that all team knowledge is shared with everyone. where do you get the idea that i do nothing? it is my job to allocate resources properly, but it is also my choice how to to do that.
you seem to look at onboarding as a kind of burden that i throw onto you on top of your other work that you'd rather not have to deal with. i see onboarding as part of the process to grow our team, exchange knowledge and experience and enable us to do ever better work.
when i am starting a new team then i onboard/mentor everyone myself, until the team is grown enough and some of the team members have enough experience to share that role. eventually, the team will be large enough to divide up into multiple teams, but i am still the one doing the hiring, and i'll be involved with onboarding until the company grows so large that it no longer makes sense to do that personally. but at that point i'll still make hiring decisions because i feel that hiring the right kind of people is to important to completely delegate.
the attitude that i expect from my team is that everyone is made welcome and we all do our best to get them integrated. onboarding materials can't replace that attitude which i see as necessary for the team to work well together.
How about you encourage the team to actively monitor where onboarding takes time, year by year, learn from that, make onboarding materials which encompass institutional knowledge, and make the process as much self serve as possible?
Or assigning a "buddy/mentor" like persona that is responsible for this specific onboarding, so the rest of the team don't get distracted + the expectations on delivery are lowered for the "buddy"?
> it takes that is in their capacity to move the project forward
It takes quiet and uninterrupted work and focus time, and spending effort on making onboarding as smooth as possible. Just hoping your devs will do all the work of onboarding + their own work, and you doing nothing, that's just...what I expected I guess.