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/

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
2. © Microsoft Corporation Hiring Top Talent
3. © Microsoft Corporation New Hires often spend weeks or months before • Making major contribution • Reaching the productivity level of existing employees
4. © Microsoft Corporation Percentage of New Hires 14-49% of all software developers in Microsoft product teams are New Hires
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.
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
7. © Microsoft Corporation Mixed Methods Approach MINING INTERVIEWS SURVEY
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
9. © Microsoft Corporation Data Analysis • CodeMine • Data from Version Control System • Data from HR database
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
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
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?
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
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%)
15. © Microsoft Corporation RESULTS
16. © Microsoft Corporation Time to first check-in
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.
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.
19. © Microsoft Corporation Influence of factors
20. © Microsoft Corporation SI: Strong Increase; MI: Moderate Increase; NE: No Effect; MD: Moderate Decrease; SD: Strong Decrease; DK: Don’t Know
21. © Microsoft Corporation Other factors • Mentorship • Documentation – Product and Process – Different Formats • Standardize Process • Access and Permissions with team • System set-up
22. © Microsoft Corporation Time to ramp-up
23. © Microsoft Corporation Does early check-in correlated with early ramp-up? Early ramp-up not related to early first check-in
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%).
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%).
26. © Microsoft Corporation Influence of factors
27. © Microsoft Corporation SI: Strong Increase; MI: Moderate Increase; NE: No Effect; MD: Moderate Decrease; SD: Strong Decrease; DK: Don’t Know
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
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.
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
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
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.
33. © Microsoft Corporation Thank you!