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

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

Presented at ESEM 2015 in Beijing, China.

http://eseiw.iscas.ac.cn/eseiw2015/esem/

Thomas Zimmermann

October 22, 2015
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  1. © Microsoft Corporation
    Ramp-up Journey of New Hires:
    Tug of War of Aids and Impediments
    Ayushi Rastogi, Suresh Thummalapenta, Thomas Zimmermann,
    Nachiappan Nagappan, Jacek Czerwonka

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  2. © Microsoft Corporation
    Hiring Top Talent

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  3. © Microsoft Corporation
    New Hires often spend weeks or
    months before
    • Making major contribution
    • Reaching the productivity
    level of existing employees

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  4. © Microsoft Corporation
    Percentage of New Hires
    14-49% of all
    software developers
    in Microsoft product
    teams are New Hires

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  5. © Microsoft Corporation
    Goal of this Study
    1. Identify factors that influence the ramp-up
    journey of new hires.
    2. Measure the amount of time it takes for
    new hires to become productive.

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  6. © 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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  7. © Microsoft Corporation
    Mixed Methods Approach
    MINING INTERVIEWS SURVEY

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  8. © 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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  9. © Microsoft Corporation
    Data Analysis
    • CodeMine
    • Data from Version Control System
    • Data from HR database

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  10. © Microsoft Corporation
    Time to First Check-In
    First check-in that makes the release branch
    Intuition:
    • Basic understanding of the engineering system
    • Basic knowledge of the project

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  11. © 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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  12. © 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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  13. © Microsoft Corporation
    Survey Questions
    • Influence of factors on time to first check-in
    and time to ramp-up
    • Other activities that take time
    • Suggestions for improvement of the ramp up
    process

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  14. © 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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  15. © Microsoft Corporation
    RESULTS

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  16. © Microsoft Corporation
    Time to
    first check-in

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  17. © 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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  18. © 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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  19. © Microsoft Corporation
    Influence of factors

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  20. © Microsoft Corporation
    SI: Strong Increase; MI: Moderate Increase; NE: No Effect;
    MD: Moderate Decrease; SD: Strong Decrease; DK: Don’t Know

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  21. © Microsoft Corporation
    Other factors
    • Mentorship
    • Documentation
    – Product and Process
    – Different Formats
    • Standardize Process
    • Access and Permissions with team
    • System set-up

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  22. © Microsoft Corporation
    Time to
    ramp-up

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  23. © Microsoft Corporation
    Does early check-in correlated with
    early ramp-up?
    Early ramp-up not related to early first check-in

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  24. © 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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  25. © 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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  26. © Microsoft Corporation
    Influence of factors

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  27. © Microsoft Corporation
    SI: Strong Increase; MI: Moderate Increase; NE: No Effect;
    MD: Moderate Decrease; SD: Strong Decrease; DK: Don’t Know

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  28. © 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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  29. © 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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  30. © 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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  31. © 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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  32. © Microsoft Corporation
    Summary
    • Factors that influence the ramp-up journey of
    new hires.
    • Amount of time it takes for new hires to
    become productive.

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  33. © Microsoft Corporation
    Thank you!

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