This is a version of the document I used at Question as one of its owners.
Permission to use this on my portfolio was granted by my gracious former business partners.
Congratulations on passing our screening process and getting the offer.
Thank you for accepting the offer!
This is the starting point for your onboarding process.
<these links originally linked to internal Confluence pages, but they are disabled here in this portfolio sample. Most of these pages were also written by me>
You have a company ambassador
On your first day, a human from the studio will walk you through this page via a shared screen on Slack. This human is aware of their obligation as your company "Ambassador". You should expect the following from this session:
Sign the Employee Agreement
If you haven't, already. Here is a link to <the PDF>.
Set up your accounts
| Account | Details |
|---|---|
| This should have already been set up for you by the time you gain access to this page. Make sure you set up 2-Step Verification or else you will be locked out of your account, which prevents access to Perforce | |
| Calendar | Make sure an admin added your work email to the <company calendar> |
| JIRA/Confluence | Your email is your means of logging in to this |
| Perforce | We use email to authenticate access to source control |
| <video/screenshare account> | Create a <video/screenshare> account if you haven't already (you can use your work email if you wish to keep your personal account separate). Once created, we grant you access to the company room as an employee |
| Slack | You would have gotten a Slack invite sent to your work email. We barely use email at this studio. Almost everything is through Slack, JIRA, and Confluence. Set your Slack Time Zone, Location, and Gender Pronouns Useful channels: <list of channels for various purposes, including ones like #watercooler, which maintain humanity amongst our team of distributed employees> |
| Gusto (U.S. Employees) |
If you are a salaried employee in the United States, setup your Gusto Benefits and 401K |
| Steam | If you have a Steam account, have IT add it to the company group so that you have access to all studio games, including the one we're working on. If you don't have a Steam account and don't want to mix personal with business, then you still need to create a Steam account because we use Steam to distribute builds to the team for testing. You can use your work email. |
Set up your dev environment
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| <Dev Setup for New Employees> | It would be a miracle if everything in that Dev Setup worked perfectly the first time. Parts of it tend to become outdated as things change around inside and outside the studio. Do not hesitate to contact IT Support (see useful link above) if you run into any problems. |
| Hardware needs for purchasing | Every employee is entitled to a new machine that is able to do the work required for this job. This can either be a set of parts that you assemble yourself or a pre-assembled machine of our choosing. Talk to your lead to see what your options are. |
| Software needs for purchasing | Each discipline has different software requirements. Talk to your lead for your software purchases. |
Get To Know Your Team
<link to People Directory>
To counter some of the disadvantages of being fully distributed, we tend to have meetings on Slack that are open to everyone. If you can see it, you can join it and observe. As you get into the rhythm of day-to-day operations within the studio, try keeping a mental map of who does what within the team. Your mental map might look something like this:
| Who | Notes |
|---|---|
| <your lead's name> | How is tasking managed/distributed within the discipline? Are you given opportunities to "learn by doing"? Is there an effort to stake out an area of ownership for you within the project? |
| <members of your discipline> | See any opportunities for load balancing that fit your skillsets? |
| Person X | Seems to be the go-to person for feature Y |
Get To Know The Project
Personal Milestones
| Goal | What it signifies |
|---|---|
| Read the Studio <Code of Conduct> | Knowing what NOT to do at this studio |
| Ran the Editor | Your dev environment is set up |
| Played the game on Steam | You have a Steam account with access privileges from the company and are ready to provide fresh non-jaded feedback |
| Completed Your first task/ fixed your first bug | You have Jira/Perforce access and know how to use it. People can now trust you to do things. |
| Wrote your first JIRA | You understand the project enough to know when something ain't right, and you care enough to make it possible for somebody to fix what you saw. |