30/60/90 Onboarding plan for developers

Onboarding plan

Onboarding new team members to become full contributors takes months. If they leave, it can be incredibly frustrating because of the lost time and energy spent getting them up to speed on your product, internal processes, and coding standards.

During the "The Great Resignation," the tech industry saw a 4.5% increase in resignations during 2021 alone, and in 2022-2023, software engineers were among the 100,000 tech employees laid off.

Each developer costs upwards of $20,000 to $35,000 to become a full contributor, not to mention the incalculable amount of time consumed across your team.

How does great developer onboarding fit in, and why does it matter?

Developer onboarding is important as it is closely related to retention, job satisfaction, productivity, and success. 

Despite pinpointing all the downstream effects of onboarding, consistently successful onboarding has a long way to go.

Source: Reddit

There is no "one-size-fits-all" onboarding solution, but there are best practices worth considering.

Our eBook outlines detailed steps to create an efficient and successful onboarding framework (along with key tactics to personalize for each employee) and a downloadable 30/60/90 template. 

Use this as your guide to streamline the onboarding process for all your new hires.

Why a 30/60/90 Plan Determines a Developer's Success or Failure

Onboarding is essential, but many organizations struggle with it, especially in remote or hybrid work environments. 

Here are three key reasons you need to use a 30/60/90 plan to onboard your tech talent:

• Increase Retention

• Clear onboarding milestones define success

• A mentor's training defines the onboarding experience

Increase retention

According to Gallup analytics, only 12% of U.S. employees said their company did a good job onboarding. One in five employees rated their experience as poor or received no onboarding. 

On the other hand, 70% of the employees with exceptional onboarding experiences highly rated their jobs and were 2.6x more likely to be satisfied with and stay at their workplace.

Turnover is not a new challenge, but an effective onboarding program will significantly reduce high rates, especially during those all-important first 90 days.

Clear onboarding milestones define success

What's the reason for onboarding failure? Atul Gawande, author of "The Checklist Manifesto," writes that there's a clear distinction between errors of ignorance (mistakes we make because we don't know enough) and errors of ineptitude (mistakes we make because we don't make proper use of what we know). 

Failure in developer onboarding results from both "errors of ineptitude" and "errors of ignorance."Managers and team leads have a lot on their plates to meet company goals, and despite having access to online resources, documentation, and personal knowledge to create a successful onboarding solution, the implementation often falls short — perhaps due to limited bandwidth.

On the other hand, unclear company goals or differing expectations from leadership can result in misaligned onboarding milestones due to errors of ignorance. 

Creating a 30/60/90 onboarding plan tackles both types of errors by capturing refined knowledge and documenting clear milestones to align expectations across the company.

A mentor's training defines the onboarding experience

It's not entirely up to the new hire for a successful onboarding process — the mentor holds just as much responsibility.

Source: Reddit

Developer training is a part of the onboarding process and it involves multi-stakeholder tasks such as documenting expectations for all mentors in training, keeping all team members on the same page, and minimizing confusion from miscommunicated or unspoken expectations. 

As a mentor, encourage questions and be a helpful resource during the onboarding process by setting clear expectations. It's natural to want to impress the new team or supervisor, so some new hires may be hesitant to show ignorance or confusion OR bite off more than they can chew within the first couple of weeks.

30/60/90 plan elements

Before we dive into the specifics of the onboarding plan (To skip ahead to action items, go to page X), let's cover 3 top-of-mind priorities for your 30/60/90 plan. Think of this as an outline blueprint for what a new employee will accomplish within 90 days. 

Prioritize the following elements when developing an engineering 30/60/90 plan:

1. Technical Setup and Tool Familiarization

2. Personalize the process

3. Team Integration & Culture

Technical Setup and Project Familiarization

Set your new hire up with the tools and documentation needed to do their day-to-day tasks. 

Some considerations include the following:

• Development Environment: Ensure new developers have all necessary tools installed, licenses obtained, and access granted. This includes the IDE (Integrated Development Environment), source control, databases, and other essential tools.

• Codebase Access & Overview: Grant access to the repository and provide an introduction to the codebase. A high-level architectural overview is invaluable for understanding how different components interact.

• Documentation: Point new developers to existing documentation about coding standards, design patterns, and workflows. If possible, assign a reading list for the first few days. Better yet, point your new developer to well-written code.

Source: How Docs as Code Can Supercharge My Dev Team

Personalize the process

How does your onboarding meet your new hire's specific needs?

Every developer enters your company at a different starting point. Joseph Gefroh, VP of Engineering at HealthSherpa, manages this by tailoring onboarding to varied learning needs and experience levels.

"A person can be great at one thing but junior in another. Identifying where your team's strengths and weaknesses lie is therefore the key first step in leading them." – Joseph Gefroh, VP of Engineering at HealthSherpa

Just because you're hiring multiple people for similar roles doesn't mean each of those engineers will have the same learning path. One may have completely different qualifications and require additional training modules.

Team Integration and Culture

How does your onboarding process include the rest of the team?

As you build your plan, note the action items required to familiarize your new hire with the team's processes and culture.

Include items like:

• Buddy or mentor system

• Intro meetings and meeting purposes

• Company culture

• Team-specific rituals and values

• Team lunches and social events

• Feedback loops

Final word

Onboarding is an investment in your developers and the future of your organization. Ensuring a comprehensive onboarding process can be the difference between retaining top talent or watching them walk out the door. 

With the help of a 30/60/90 plan, you can integrate new developers into your team, setting them up for success from day one.

Want a template to help kickstart your onboarding process? Check out our free 30/60/90 downloadable template included in our eBook, which provides actionable, step-by-step instructions for creating a successful onboarding plan.