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/

Transcript

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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