Onboarding

Welcome to Sourcegraph! We are so excited you are part of the team or considering it. This page outlines what you’ll need to do to get started.

In order for us to create a better onboarding experience for new teammates we have defined dates for people to start. You can check out our New Cohort calendar. If you are planning to join us and these dates don’t work for you, please contact the Talent team and let them know your situation.

New teammates are paired with someone to connect that can share their experiences and advice to help make their transition a little smoother. You can read more about the Onboarding buddy program here

Guiding principles

Everyone is here to support you as you onboard

Joining a new company can be overwhelming—there’s a lot to learn! As you navigate your first few weeks at Sourcegraph, we want you to know that everyone on the team is here to help and will gladly drop anything to answer any question you have.

Every time you’re curious or confused about something—just ask! When you do so, use public discussion channels as much as possible.

Think and act like an owner

At Sourcegraph, we don’t think of teammates as resources—we think of them as owners of their work, who constantly reevaluate how to use their talents to be as impactful as possible. We value your opinions and ideas. You should always feel empowered to identify potential improvements and act upon them, whether they be improvements to processes (like onboarding), our handbook and general documentation, our codebase and tooling, or our product.

Never assume that a problem is somebody else’s to fix!

Onboarding standards and success

Onboarding expectations

This is a basic breakdown of our expectations for providing a smooth onboarding process:

  • New teammate has the tools and resources they need to navigate their day to day (accounts, software…)
  • New teammate has the necessary support from their peers, manager, and People team (regular 1-1s, shadowing…)
  • New teammate knows where to find answers to their questions
  • New teammate experiences no logistical challenges (payroll, expenses, benefits, setting up accounts or other systems…)
  • The onboarding checklist is manageable and easy to navigate by new teammates
  • New teammate has the necessary understanding of Sourcegraph’s values, products, value proposition, and internal processes to be able to conduct their role’s responsibilities

Onboarding experience

Onboarding survey

Surveys are conducted at the 3-month mark to collect feedback from all new teammates to make sure that their onboarding experience is properly equipping them with the support and resources necessary for them to be successful in their new role.

Onboarding experience - Survey questions:

  • Was the onboarding process successful in helping you become productive as fast as possible?
  • Was the general onboarding process successful in helping you become productive as fast as possible?
  • Was the specific onboarding process successful in helping you become productive as fast as possible?

Onboarding content - Survey questions:

  • Was there anything that was not provided in your onboarding that you think should have been?
  • Did the onboarding process provide you the tools to carry out your role?
  • Did you have the resources to use them properly?
  • Did you have the necessary check-ins with your manager and teammates to ask questions, have shadowing sessions, etc?

Onboarding format and presentation - Survey questions:

  • Was the onboarding platform (Process.st) intuitive and easy to follow?
  • Was the format easy to follow?
  • Was each task and its purpose communicated clearly?

Here you can find dashboards with the onboarding survey results.

Onboarding checklist

Before your first day, we will share your onboarding checklist. This will serve as a guide for you to navigate your first weeks with us. You will be provided tasks, context, and will be pointed to the right resources.

We don’t expect you to know everything by the time stated in each task. We know this is a process. But we want you to have the resources available and to know where the information is for you to come back to them later.

For the most part, this is a self paced process, tasks and content is presented in sequence, but you are free to organize your own time. However, some tasks are mandatory. Please see this handbook page to understand more about the checklist and the mandatory tasks.

Onboarding Reviews

There are different instances of onboarding reviews.

One month check-in

People Ops sets up individual meetings to collect live feedback and address any questions or concerns from every new teammate at the 1-month mark.

Onboarding Feedback Milestones

The People Ops team wants to help managers support their teammates better, in order for them to avoid burnout, better clarify expectations, give feedback on progress and stimulate confidence in new teammates in the first few months, thereby enhancing performance and wellbeing.

We also want to support managers in gathering insight of their teammate’s progress and development.

Read about how we do this in Onboarding Feedback Milestones

Before you start at Sourcegraph

Hiring managers can refer to the Onboarding process for Hiring Managers page.

  1. Once you sign your contract, the Talent team will send you a welcome email linking you to a pre-onboarding form. Be sure to complete the form in time.
  2. Send your introduction video no later than 48hrs after receiving the email. The video will be shown in the company meeting the week that you start.
  3. Order your computer or talk to Inés Roitman, ines@sourcegraph.com, if you need to get it with the company card.
  4. Order the desk equipment you need to be productive working remotely.

You will be able to submit an expense reimbursement for the computer and desk equipment when you start.

Learn about Sourcegraph

Communication and documentation

Other resources

Bonus: you can celebrate joining Sourcegraph by changing your LinkedIn background to the Sourcegraph banner!

Team specific onboarding