1. Onboarding
at Scale
Tomer Gabel
Velocity 2016 Amsterdam
Image: Akheree Monajat (CC BY-SA 3.0)

2. Wix is…
• A web publishing platform
• Distributed R&D
– Tel-Aviv (Israel)
– Be’er-Sheva (Israel)
– Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine)
– Kiev (Ukraine)
– Vilnius (Lithuania)
• Growing rapidly
– Jul 2013: 120 engineers
– Now: 400+ engineers

3. Scaling up is hard
Fundamental premise:

4. RESEARCHImage: Martine Perret / UNMEER (CC BY-ND 2.0)

5. Guilds and Companies
Company
Guild

6. Our Customers
Server Guild
React Guild
NG Guild

7. Challenges
Onboarding
Doctrine
Recruiting

8. Proposed Solution:

9. Product Suite
KickstartTraining Kit Crash Course
Images: Jeff Robins (CC BY 2.0), Vernon Cunningham (Public Domain), Paul Fisher (CC BY-SA 2.0)

10. Training Kit

11. Training Kit: Customers
As a Guild Lead, I want to:
• Start onboarding early
• Reduce overhead
• Have quality reference
material
Image: KCNA

12. Training Kit: Customers
As a Team Lead, I want to:
• Simplify training of new
hires
• Minimize disruption to
my team
• Have quality reference
material
Image: John Kennicutt, USMC (Public Domain)

13. Training Kit: Customers
As a new hire, I want to:
• Understand the
technology stack
• Be productive quickly
• Learn on my own
(and not be a pest)
Image: Cubmundo (BY-SA 2.0)

14. Training Kit: Design Goals
Guided self-learning
Customizable
Based on external resources

15. Kickoff
• Meet the Guild Lead
– Validate assumptions
– Identify key (technical)
partners
• Scope definition
– Meet key partners
– Set scope and expectations
– Generate “bucket list” of
desirable topics
• Review and prioritize

16. Development
• Guild Days
– Ask for some volunteers
– Host them for a full day
– Volunteers pick subjects
– Volunteers search &
evaluate material

17. Development
• Postprocessing
– By a professional
training developer
– Wording, formatting
– Consistent structure

18. Feedback Collection
• Per-subject feedback
– Simple web form
– Highlights substantial issues (if
any)
• Guild Day (one-off)
– Technical review by experts
• Interviews (one-off)
– Team leads
– New hires

19. Lessons Learned
Assumptions
• Content
– Only developers can
evaluate content
– Minor post-processing
– Focus on learning
• Structure
– Topics are atomic units
– Customizable set/order
Reality
– Dedicated professional
can take over
– Most of the actual work
– Need actionable content
(exercises, koans etc.)
– Topics are interrelated
– Modules are necessary

20. Lessons Learned
Assumptions
• Marketing
– R&D will self-market
– No need for special effort
• Maintenance
– Mostly ad-hoc
– Developer pull requests
• Future efforts
– Proper UX
Reality
– Little known, little used
– Initial push insufficient
– Constant, significant work
– Little participation
– Not that useful, for now

21. So what’s next?
1. Dedicated
content/training
developer
2. Revise structure for
modularity
3. Significant in-house
marketing effort
Image: Booyabazooka (CC BY-SA 3.0)

22. Kickstart

23. Kickstart: Overview
Takes juniors as input, outputs web developers
9 weeks, fully salaried
End result: professional web developers

24. Kickstart: Tiers
1. Individual self-learning
2. Teamwork and agile methods
3. Full product lifecycle

25. Kickstart: Challenges
Expensive (salaries, resources)
Tightly coupled recruiting effort
Mentorship and preparation

26. Recruitment
• Unique requirements
– Experience/skill level
– Recruiting in bulk
– Cost mitigation
• A dedicated pipeline
– “Recruiting days”
– Carefully orchestrated

27. Lessons Learned
Why do this?
• The social element
– Company culture
– Built-in “buddy system”
• Sustainable recruiting
– Easy to plan for
– Marketing-bound, really
– Great people!
Why not?
• Expensive
– Facilities, staff, amenities…
– And fully salaried to boot
• Hard to do consistently
– Staff turnover
– Buy-in is a constant effort
– Dedicated staff is critical

28. Crash
Course

29. Crash Course: Overview
Mid- to senior-level onboarding course
Recurring, every ~2 months
3 weeks
End result: a working MVP

30. Crash Course: Rationale
End-to-end production experience
Groups mimic team structure
Focus on methodology, philosophy

31. Crash Course: Challenges
Cost-prohibitive below 10 participants
Requires mix of server/front-end
Mentorship and preparation

32. Planning
• Week 1: Ramp-up
– Heavy on doctrine (TDD, CD)
– Tech stack (Scala, TypeScript)
• Weeks 2-3: Project time
– Guided bootstrapping
– Constant mentorship

33. Lessons Learned
Why do this?
• Break down the wall
– The server-client divide
– Reinforce TDD, CD etc.
– Makes our stack accessible
• Reduces new employee
friction
• Huge marketing boon

34. Lessons Learned
Why not?
• Expensive
– Facilities, staff, amenities…
– And fully salaried to boot
• Tight scheduling
– Lots of ad-hoc adjustments
– Everything needs a backup
• Minimal recruiting rate
Image: Jenny Poole (CC BY 2.0)

35. POST-MORTEMImage: Daniel X. O’Neil (CC BY 2.0)

36. Lessons Learned
• These are long-
running projects
• For best results:
– Assign dedicated staff
– Long-term
• This means you can’t
rely on engineers
– Trust me, I am one…
Program
Manager
Project
Manager
Training
Developer

37. Lessons Learned
• Scaling up is hard
• Doing it ad-hoc works!
• Until it doesn’t
– It’s not about size
– It’s about growth
• Consider ROI carefully!
Image: Damian Gadal (CC BY 2.0)

38. Lessons Learned
• Mentors are your biggest asset
– You need their buy-in
– You need them to come back
• Give them what they need
– “Soft skills” workshops, simulations
– Expectation setting and guidance
– Hold status/venting sessions. Pay attention!

39. Lessons Learned
• These are big projects
• Success is about logistics
– Huge todo list
– Scheduling hell
– Constant interruptions
– Follow-ups
• That’s a lot to keep track of
• Hire a Project Manager.
“Behind every great
leader there was an
even greater
logistician.”
- M. Cox
Image: Rom Logistics (CC BY-SA 3.0)

40. QUESTIONS?
Thank you for listening
tomer@tomergabel.com
@tomerg
http://engineering.wix.com
To contact Wix academy (ask us anything!):
academy@wix.com
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.