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Ask HN: How do you ramp up on a new job?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you ramp up on a new job?

#11

Post by aynyc »

You should set up 1-1 with everyone on your team with a regular cadence. Even if you are fully remote, face time is important, but make it short. 20-25 minutes to go over your materials, give people 5 minutes back so they can prep for their next meeting.

Here are some of the things you can to do:

1. Show improvement each time, whether that's your understanding of the systems, team culture, expectations or needs. This shows your team that you are learning.

2. Produce notes, documents or graphs, this tend to validate your standing amongst the team especially the team lack comprehension documentation. For example, I produce a lot of Miro/whiteboards on system interaction as well as business flow. Every team I've worked with love those graphs and notes. I still get questions from teams that I've moved on for years.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ramp up on a new job?

#13

Post by imiric »

In addition to what everyone else has said, run the codebase through a LLM, and ask it questions. If the code is private and privacy is a concern, look into self-hosting the LLM. You might not be able to analyze the full repo yet, but you can inspect modules separately, and get a mental model of the codebase quicker than if you were manually inspecting it.

Also, read any technical documentation about the product, team/company processes, etc. You can quickly get an idea of how well the product is maintained if the documentation is up to date. If not, then submitting documentation patches is a good first step your teammates will appreciate.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ramp up on a new job?

#15

Post by codeonline »

imiric wrote: post #13

In addition to what everyone else has said, run the codebase through a LLM, and ask it questions. If the code is private and privacy is a concern, look into self-hosting the LLM. You might not be able to analyze the full repo yet, but you can inspect modules separately, and get a mental model of the codebase quicker than if you were manually inspecting it. Also, read any technical documentation about the product, tea…

> run the codebase through a LLM

Do you have a good example of how to go about that?

Re: Ask HN: How do you ramp up on a new job?

#16

Post by thow_away_34564 »

I recently switched to the corporate side of my job in a new position 3 months ago and my process has been to ask a ton of questions, take notes, try to understand the problem, the pain points, and where else I can add value to the company.

While I could work almost fully remote and come into the office 1 time a week, I opted to work in the office 5 days a week because I know personal connections with people matter, especially when trying to ask questions or figure things out.

Review the notes you take! I use Obsidian, but there are plenty of other applications.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ramp up on a new job?

#17

Post by imiric »

codeonline wrote: post #15
imiric wrote: post #13

In addition to what everyone else has said, run the codebase through a LLM, and ask it questions. If the code is private and privacy is a concern, look into self-hosting the LLM. You might not be able to analyze the full repo yet, but you can inspect modules separately, and get a mental model of the codebase quicker than if you were manually inspecting it. Also, read any technical documentation about the product, tea…

> run the codebase through a LLM Do you have a good example of how to go about that?

I don't, unfortunately. I haven't had the need to try it yet, but I would experiment with it if I was exploring a new codebase.

There are some proprietary services that interface against GPT-3/4[1], though if privacy is a concern, it's getting increasingly easier to self-host LLMs. It seems like every day there's a new open source development that makes these tools more accessible. Just in the last few weeks we've seen llama.cpp, Alpaca, Dalai... New projects are appearing so frequently that it's hard to keep up. Their token size and quality is not yet at the GPT-4 level, so you can't analyze entire codebases yet, but they'd still be useful for smaller chunks of code. And at this pace we can expect great improvements soon.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35313506

Re: Ask HN: How do you ramp up on a new job?

#18

Post by Jeremy1026 »

ResearchCode wrote: post #10
mock-possum wrote: post #5

I mean - a good job will ramp you up. But generally, you want to start small, on tasks that will expose you to the ins and outs of the codebase, and you want another more experienced dev to be ‘on call’ to help you out when you get stuck for the first few sprints. That’s the kind of support you wanna look for.

Generally the good jobs don't have "sprints".

Why not? Having a clear, defined, roadmap and the ability to plan out work is a fantastic thing to have.

Re: Ask HN: How do you ramp up on a new job?

#19

Post by mock-possum »

ResearchCode wrote: post #10
mock-possum wrote: post #5

I mean - a good job will ramp you up. But generally, you want to start small, on tasks that will expose you to the ins and outs of the codebase, and you want another more experienced dev to be ‘on call’ to help you out when you get stuck for the first few sprints. That’s the kind of support you wanna look for.

Generally the good jobs don't have "sprints".

Sprints are pretty common in my experience in software dev, and I’ve never had a problem with them… what makes you say that?

Re: Ask HN: How do you ramp up on a new job?

#20

Post by ResearchCode »

Jeremy1026 wrote: post #18
ResearchCode wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally the good jobs don't have "sprints".

Why not? Having a clear, defined, roadmap and the ability to plan out work is a fantastic thing to have.

Unnecessary overhead and micromanagement. You don't need "sprints" for any of that.
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