Ramp-Up Journey of New Hires: Tug of War of Aids and Impediments

Hiring top talent is essential for any software company's success. After joining the company, new hires often spend weeks or months before making any major contribution and attaining the same productivity level as existing employees. We use the term ramp-up journey to refer to this transition of new hires from novice to experts. There can be several factors, such as lack of experience or lack of familiarity with processes unique to the new company, which influence the ramp-up journey. To understand such aids and impediments in the ramp-up journey, we conducted a study by analyzing data extracted from version control systems of eight large and popular product groups in Microsoft with several thousand software developers. In particular, we studied two aspects of the ramp-up journey. First, we studied time taken to make the first check-in into the version control system, an important milestone in the ramp-up journey indicating the first contribution. Second, we analyzed the time taken to reach the same productivity level as existing employees in terms of check-ins. We further augmented our quantitative study with qualitative results derived by surveying 411 professional developers. Our study produced promising results, including factors such as having a mentor, prior knowledge of required skill sets, and proactively asking questions, that could help reduce the ramp-up journey of new hires.