Ramping in a new company as a Developer - 3/19/2025
Personal and direct Notes from Frontend Masters Course “Software Developer Success: Soft Skills & Testing”
- Ask questions.
- Pair programming or shadow experience coworkers / Ramp-up boddy.
Tribal Knowledge to Learn from Others
- Get to know good and bad parts of the codebase.
- Which are the patterns one should follow and which ones should be avoided.
- What’s expected for testing & maintainability.
- What the PR process like? How many reviewers? What kind of feedback to expect?
- What is the pipeline to deployment like?
- Which documentation sources are reliable or stale?
- Introduction to partner teams and what they do.
- Introduction to different coworkers and when to go to them.
- Any other company-specific gotchas to know about.
Tasks are generally flexible
Common obstacles when executing tasks:
- Under-communication.
- Not understanding how long a task will take.
- Not having enough information about the task.
Estimation
- Spike the task.
- Practice breaking down tasks and estimating how long it takes.
- Understand how long it takes to get the completion in your company process.
Example for Code Complete:
- How is the PR process review? How long does it take?
- How long does the following flow take: Test -> Stage -> Prod env?
- Deploy? Once a week? Everyday?
Over communicate
What
- What is done.
- What is in-progress.
- What are blockers.
- What is at risk of not being delivered.
To Who
- To your manager.
- To your teammates working on this task.
- To any stakeholders relying on this work.
Gathering information
- What is the task.
- What are the validation steps.
- Who are the stakeholders.
- Who is relying on it.
- Why this task matters.
- When is it needed.