[jtfairbank]

I plan on spending the full day with the new hire or intern, and my goal is to go from 0 to a running build to a commit in day 1. Sure, it is kinda a hassle for me to block out the whole day, but that gets them past all of the poorly written docs and stupid install/setup bugs. They get excited instead of frustrated. The rest of the first week is exploratory- I ask them to make improvements to the docs based on their experience (get them up to date if they're behind), and also to share notes on larger improvements or ideas they have while they are still fresh. I aim for 1 commit a day in different parts of the codebase to give them some breadth. The second week I treat them like a normal team member to start building a regular flow, but give them a light week of work and block out ~1 hour a day for code reviews and Q&A.

Everything kinda sucks at startups, especially docs. The right way to do this is invest your time up front in order to save you and the new hire time in the long run.