Ramp-up Journey of New Hires: Tug of War of Aids and Impediments

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© Microsoft Corporation Application of the Results Industry – Reduce bottlenecks in existing processes – Spread best practices Academia – Understand skills needed in industry and challenges that new hires face

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© Microsoft Corporation New Hires • University recruit or first company • Joined as an intern or vendor and converted to a full time position • Left the company and joined again after at least a year • Worked for other companies in the past

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© Microsoft Corporation Time to Ramp-up Employee reaches the productivity level of existing employees Three flavors of ramp-up • Familiarity… frequency of Check-ins • Effort… lines changed • Knowledge… files changed

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© Microsoft Corporation Interviews • 30 minutes interviews with 4 developers – What factors supported or undermined attempts to early first check-in and the time to ramp-up? – What could have been done to reduce it?

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© Microsoft Corporation Survey Participants • Selection of population – Have started recently (fresh memory) and spent a minimum time at Microsoft – Anticipated response rate ~ 20% • Randomly selected 1189 developers with 6-13 months experience at Microsoft • 411 complete response (34.57%)

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© Microsoft Corporation Does the product group of new hires influence the time to first check-in? Median population of new hires across all product divisions take 4-10% of the maximum time to first check-in. Working with some specific product group has no significant impact on the time to check-in.

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© Microsoft Corporation Does prior job experience influence the time to first check-in? Inexperienced new hires make early first check- ins (~20%) compared to experienced new hires. Senior developers perform consistently and make early first check- ins compared to middle level SDE.

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© Microsoft Corporation Is ramp-up journey a function of product? New hires ramp-up step-wise Ramp-up journey similar on check-in counts (~32-45%); different on lines changed (~45-81%) and files changed (~68-100%).

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© Microsoft Corporation Is ramp-up journey a function of experience? Experience has no impact on ramp-up time on check-in counts Middle and senior developers take longer (~13% and 6%) to ramp-up on lines changed and files changed (~22%).

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© Microsoft Corporation Other factors • Team Interaction – Verbal communication/Pair programming – Recently ramped-up mentors • Training programs • Overview of the system – Well chosen starting tasks • Proximity to release

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© Microsoft Corporation Other New Hire Activities • Time to relocate • Set-up the system • Understand the existing system and their role • Acquire technical and functional knowledge • Miscellaneous: writing proposals, participate in events like Hackathons, etc.

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© Microsoft Corporation Suggestions • Apply companywide coding standards • Improved code base and documentation • Easy tools One Engineering System Initiative • Training tools • Guided work • Centralized information • Clearly communicated expectation

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© Microsoft Corporation Threats to Validity • Internal Validity – Data Accuracy • Construct Validity – Activities in other product groups – Activities other than code check-in • External Validity – Generalizability – Geographic differences

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