[voidfunc]

It is an old meme, but that said, a week to setup a dev environment is pretty ridiculous.

I try to have folks delivering business value even if very small within a week or two. I find it reduces a lot of new hire anxiety around performance if they can ship _anything_ relatively quickly.

[anonzzzies]

Most of the companies I worked with/for won't even have the security credentials set up in a week to have access to anything. VPN, keys etc. So not much you can do the first week accept sit with others to get tours of the codebase, frameworks, best practices etc.

[oldtownroad]

You’re probably not working in startups, then. If a new developer can’t push code to production on the first day in a company of <100 people then there’s something wrong. If you’re joining a big corporate with thousands of employees and regulatory obligations then sure, a week or more for security credentials is normal, but in a startup, a week is a terrible sign of dysfunction.

[anonzzzies]

Depends on the business I guess; I work mostly with companies (including startups and massive firms) in banking and gov ; there are companies with 20-30 people who cannot get people to do anything within weeks simply because of all the red tape.

[cuttysnark]

I gravitate towards startups for this reason. In my experience with big orgs, everything takes forever and involves 20+ people. Often, still nothing really gets done. At startups, I or someone sitting virtually next to me is the one creating the initial integrations, accounts or credentials. Similarly, I am compelled by the MVP and the express lane it demands. I loathe red tape and process for the sake of process—and it's most evident as a new-hire, watching others scramble to onboard you, only to keep hitting corporate walls.

While I don't think as a blanket rule a new hire should push prod code on day or week one—they should be able to without being ham-stringed by needless bureaucracy that has nothing to do with security or engineering. (IMO)

[lolinder]

That's entirely due to the sector you're in. That 20-30 person company may be small, but it's attached to a massive external bureaucracy. They don't need to invent their own red tape, and all other companies are playing with the same handicap.

In a different sector, 20-30 people is the stage where you should be capitalizing on how much faster you can move than the large bureaucratic incumbent, and if there's red tape that takes weeks to navigate it means someone in the company put it there.

[anonzzzies]

> That's entirely due to the sector you're in.

I am aware of that; I like it that way. I like long term stability and large bags of money without stress.

The capitalising and ‘faster’ and hurry and stress you speak off is nice if you want bankrupt-or-unicorn. We don’t need to be market leader or whatever; we need to have stability decade after decade and we do. I like profit of millions$/year and small teams, not some breakneck VC funded fast growing all-or-bust stuff. Each their own of course.