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Checklist

The complete developer onboarding checklist.

Six phases, owner assignments, and cost-of-delay notes for critical items. Tick what is done; flag what is not.
P1

Pre-board

Day -7 to 0

10 items / 6 critical

Single highest-leverage phase. Eliminating day-one friction saves 2-5 days of mentor time and starts the productivity curve a week earlier.

  • Laptop ordered, imaged, shipped or desk-readyCRITICAL

    Delay cost: $1.5k-$3k per day late

  • All accounts created (GitHub, cloud, Slack, email, observability, SSO)CRITICAL
  • Repository read access granted before day oneCRITICAL
  • Buddy assigned and named in welcome emailCRITICAL
  • First-week calendar populated (intros, ceremonies, 30-min focus blocks)
  • Welcome packet with architecture map and reading list
  • Compliance documents (NDA, IP assignment, payroll) sent and signedCRITICAL
  • Team Slack channel announcement scheduled for day one
  • Dev container or bootstrap script tested by latest existing hire
  • First-week ticket selected (small docs / tests / bug, not customer-facing)CRITICAL
P2

Day one

W01 D1

8 items / 3 critical

Goal: end of day one with environment running, team met, and the first-week plan understood. No tickets shipped yet.

  • Manager 1:1 (60 min): role, expectations, 30-60-90 reviewCRITICAL
  • Buddy walk-through of repo and dev environmentCRITICAL
  • Team intro round (15 min standup-style)
  • Tooling tour: docs, runbooks, monitoring, on-call rota
  • First commit (PR to README, internal docs, or test)

    Delay cost: Top teams target a first commit by Day 1-2

  • Confirm laptop, accounts, and access all workingCRITICAL
  • Equipment, ergonomics, and benefits paperwork closed
  • Calendar reviewed and protected focus blocks confirmed
P3

Week one

W01

8 items / 5 critical

Goal: first PR merged. Architecture overview attended. Buddy and manager 1:1s established as recurring.

  • Architecture walkthrough recorded session watched + Q&ACRITICAL
  • Test suite runs locally, all environments accessibleCRITICAL
  • Branching strategy and PR workflow understoodCRITICAL
  • First non-trivial PR opened (small bug or test)CRITICAL
  • First sprint ceremony attended (planning, standup, demo)
  • Deployment pipeline walkthrough completed
  • Production runbook and incident response read
  • End-of-week retro with manager (15 min)CRITICAL
P4

Month one

W02-W04

8 items / 4 critical

Goal: first feature shipped to staging. Sprint ceremonies routine. 30-day check-in completed.

  • First feature PR reviewed and mergedCRITICAL
  • Independent staging deployment
  • Five+ key services / modules in the codebase mappedCRITICAL
  • Knowledge gaps identified, learning plan agreed
  • Security and compliance training completedCRITICAL
  • 30-day check-in: progress vs 30-60-90 planCRITICAL
  • Code review style understood (giving and receiving)
  • Comfortable in team Slack and async culture
P5

Month two

W05-W08

8 items / 3 critical

Goal: consistent sprint commitments met. Debugging production issues with minimal guidance. First on-call rotation eligibility.

  • Sprint commitments met two sprints in a rowCRITICAL
  • Production debugging without escalation
  • Writing meaningful tests alongside featuresCRITICAL
  • Contributing to technical design discussions
  • 60-day check-in: sprint metrics, blockers, growthCRITICAL
  • On-call shadow rotation completed
  • Identifying code quality improvements proactively
  • First quarterly OKR ownership
P6

Month three

W09-W12

8 items / 4 critical

Goal: 80-90% of team velocity. Owns at least one feature end-to-end. 90-day review and onboarding marked complete.

  • Velocity at 80-90% of team average for two sprintsCRITICAL
  • Owned at least one feature end-to-endCRITICAL
  • Contributing to retros and process improvements
  • First on-call primary rotation completed
  • 90-day review with managerCRITICAL
  • Onboarding officially marked completeCRITICAL
  • Eligible to interview new candidates
  • Continued-learning budget and growth plan confirmed

Cost of delay

One missed critical item: 1-3 weeks of ramp drag.

At a $130K average salary that is $3,000-$7,500 per delayed item. The pre-board phase is the single highest-leverage place to invest. Most engineering organisations could shorten ramp by a full week just by doing pre-board well.

Cost breakdown per phase

What each checklist phase actually costs the business

A checklist is a punch list of tasks; what most managers actually want to know is what each phase costs and where the unfixable losses live. Six phases, rough cost per hire at typical US engineer rates, and where the irreversible spend lives.

PhaseTypical spanCost per hire (rough)Where the unfixable cost lives
P1 Pre-boardDay -10 to -1Low ($200-$600 in hardware, license setup)Cheapest phase to do, most expensive phase to skip. A pre-board fail means day-1 starts at zero ramp.
P2 Day oneFirst 24 hours$500-$1,200 (salary + senior-engineer access scramble)First-day impression is hard to walk back. Engineers who feel like the org was not ready for them disengage early.
P3 Week oneDays 2-7$2,500-$6,000 (mostly salary, low output)Repo cloning, first PR, manager 1:1 cadence. The phase where ramp velocity is set; rushing skips here usually mean weeks of confusion later.
P4 Month oneDays 8-30$8,000-$15,000 (salary, productivity ramping)The first real ship cycle. Mentorship hours from a senior engineer (typically 4-8 hours per week on the new hire) is the largest hidden cost in this phase.
P5 Month twoDays 31-60$10,000-$20,000 (closer to full output)First mid-cycle review. Catching a wrong-role / wrong-fit hire here saves the salary of months 3-12; missing it is the most expensive single mistake in the whole sequence.
P6 Month threeDays 61-90$10,000-$25,000 (approaching steady-state output)The transition out of the "new hire" bucket. If the engineer is not yet meeting your level expectations, decide deliberately. Letting it slide quietly is the most expensive outcome.

Cost ranges are illustrative; pull your own numbers via the homepage calculator for your specific salary band and senior-engineer mentor rate. The breakdown above assumes a US mid-level engineer at the $130-$160K base salary band; adjust proportionally for other levels and geographies.

FAQ

Common questions

What single missed item costs the most?+

Late laptop or missing access on day one. A single day of waiting costs $1,500-$3,000 in salary plus 2-5 hours of senior engineer time scrambling to fix it. The fix is pre-boarding starting at day -7.

Should every engineer get the same checklist?+

No. Use this as the spine and add 5-10 role-specific items. Frontend engineers need design tooling; platform engineers need cloud account access; mobile engineers need code-signing certificates. Senior engineers can skip some week-one items but need more architectural context.

How rigid should the phase gates be?+

Critical items are gates. Non-critical items are guidance. If a critical item slips by more than two days, the manager and tech lead should debug actively - it usually points to a process or capacity problem, not the new hire.

What if the new hire is missing the 30-day milestones?+

First check the codebase complexity and programme maturity. If both are 'good' and the new hire is still struggling, run a no-blame check-in. About one in five mid-level hires need a six-week extension; this is normal and not a red flag unless paired with disengagement.

Related briefs

30-60-90 plan template

Ramp curve timeline

Best practices

Tools to automate this

Calculate your cost

Remote-specific items

Updated 2026-04-28