When does it make sense to give a newly hired software engineer a meaty project?

Ronan Dunlop at Director of Marketing at Pivotal Tracker (right) and Poornima Vijayashanker, founder of Femgineer (left)

Interview with Chris Jobst Senior Software Engineer at Pivotal Labs

All this month, I’ve been talking about on-boarding techniques for your new software engineering hires. I started out by talking about why on-boarding is important, and then moved on to showcase how pair and mob programming can help ramp up a lot of hires at once.

The next step is to give them a project!

Giving a new hire a meaty project can seem like a big risk. Seems easier to have them fix bugs while they ramp up on the code base.

But endlessly fixing bugs can be demotivating.

If you’re not sure when the right time is to give your new hires a meatier project, then you’ll definitely want to watch today’s Build Tip.

Chris Jobst who is a senior software engineer at Pivotal Labs is back to share some tips on how to balance bug fixes with meatier projects.

As you watch the episode you’ll learn:

• Why bug fixing is often a priority, and how to motivate new hires through it
• Why new hires are in the best position to spot technical debt and tackle it
• When does it make sense to transition from bug fixes to a project
• How to structure the project, when new hires are unfamiliar with the code base
• Why pairing more experienced software engineers on a project with new hires can help new hires level up faster

Listen to the episode on iTunes!

You can listen to this episode of Build on iTunes.

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

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Check out these additional resources on employee on-boarding:

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.