Here’s what you’ll get out of this post:

• Why talented engineers struggle to onboard, even in well-established teams.

• What actually makes onboarding demanding for both junior and senior developers.

• Who is involved in the process and why onboarding is never a one-person responsibility.

• The common traps teams fall into when onboarding becomes a secondary priority.

We’ll walk through these ideas step-by-step, uncovering where things break down and why they don’t have to.

Problem

We’ve all been there, first day at a new company. You get your device, you're introduced to a dozen people (whose names you’ll forget), and then.... You’re left staring at internal tools, outdated Confluence pages, and Slack messages from 2018, trying to piece together how anything works.

Based on our experience, engineering onboarding often feels like a slow-motion replay. Weeks of setup, countless guides, outdated documentation, and far too much "figuring it out." It doesn't have to be this way.

What actually is demanding

Most companies either don’t know or simply ignore what it takes to build a healthy onboarding experience. Some lack awareness, others lack care. Onboarding gets sidelined as an afterthought, not treated as an investment in team health and developer velocity.

Even when companies do try to onboard properly, many don’t know what “good” looks like. They’ve never studied how top engineering orgs like Stripe, Shopify, or Google structure their onboarding. Without a benchmark, they end up reinventing the wheel or settling for scattered documentation and a buddy system.

Many leaders easily assume that onboarding junior engineers is the most resource-intensive challenge. After all, they’re new to the industry, still building confidence, and often need a coach to navigate unfamiliar codebases. But the truth is, junior devs expect to ask questions and take time ramping up. They’re often eager, coachable, and open to structured learning.

Surprisingly, onboarding experienced engineers can be even more demanding, just in different ways. These engineers come in with strong skills and deep expectations. They want to understand the architecture quickly, contribute meaningfully, and avoid wasting time on shallow documentation or unclear processes. When onboarding doesn’t work well, senior engineers can slow things down instead of helping, and that makes everyone feel less motivated. And it’s not just about productivity, senior engineers are expensive. A drawn-out onboarding process, often taking up to three months and usually comes with a hefty opportunity cost when that time could’ve been spent shipping, mentoring, or leading.

The real challenge isn’t about seniority, it’s about how efficiently knowledge is transferred. Whether it's a junior figuring out their first contribution or a senior mapping the mental model of the system, both need a clear path, accessible context, and a sense of purpose. The sooner that happens, the faster they can contribute with confidence and clarity.

Friction is the enemy

Too often, we’ve seen talented engineers held back, not by lack of capability, but by unclear directions, fragmented documentation, or complex setup requirements. Many developers want to contribute to their favorite open-source projects, dive into a new codebase or participate in rotation programs, but they don’t know where to start. They can’t see the full picture, the project's architecture, direction, or even where their first contribution should land. The problem isn’t passion. It’s friction.

So why does this friction exist in the first place?

It’s rarely just one thing. Sometimes it’s a lack of planning or ownership, onboarding is treated like a checklist, not a journey. In other cases, managers simply don’t have the time, proper tools and visibility to craft repeatable, high-quality onboarding paths. There's also the reality of shifting priorities, teams are busy shipping, and documentation becomes an afterthought. Add to that the growing complexity of modern tech stacks, tribal knowledge, and inconsistent tooling across environments, and it’s no wonder new engineers feel lost before they even write a line of code.

Engineering teams and open source community deserve a unified tool that collects, organizes, and surfaces essential onboarding content directly within their workflow.

The players in onboarding

Engineering managers, tech leads, senior engineers, DevOps, even product managers, all play a role in helping someone get up to speed. Every unanswered question, every missing document, and every unclear decision from the past becomes a speed bump that someone has to navigate. Onboarding, at its core, is a reflection of how a team shares knowledge.

Onboarding is hard not just because of the code, but because of the missing context. Engineers need to know more than how the code works, they need to understand why it was written, how it changed over time, and what the team plans to do with it. To do that, they need to see past decisions, reasons behind choices, and how the team usually works.

It’s also emotional. A poorly onboarded engineer doesn’t just lose time, they lose confidence. And teams feel it too. That confusion shows up in pull requests, slows down momentum, and creates a feedback loop of second-guessing and rework. Getting onboarding right isn’t just about efficiency, it’s about psychological safety, trust, and setting the stage for long-term contribution.

Productizing onboarding

With the right tooling, onboarding can become an advantage and repeatable success. Imagine a system where every new engineer, regardless of experience level, lands in a space that guides them through code, decisions, tooling, and team practices in context. That’s not wishful thinking. It’s the result of treating onboarding as a product, not just a process.

From the developer’s lens, proper onboarding tools reduce anxiety and increase momentum. New engineers feel empowered and engaged when they can self-serve answers, visualize the bigger picture, get aligned with company's mission, and track their learning journey. They waste less time guessing and spend more time contributing.

For tech leads and senior engineers, it’s a game-changer. Instead of repeating the same explanations, they can focus on higher-leverage mentorship and meaningful code reviews. They finally get to shift from reactive to proactive, investing once in a system that pays off every time someone new joins.

CTOs and engineering leaders see the bigger picture: hiring is expensive, but retention and productivity are where the real cost and opportunity lives. Effective onboarding shortens time to impact, increases dev satisfaction, and reduces attrition. It becomes part of your engineering brand, how you scale quality and culture. Great engineers talk. The teams that onboard well become known for it.

At an industry level, better onboarding sets a new standard. As codebases grow and teams become more distributed, clarity becomes a competitive edge. With thoughtful tooling, onboarding becomes more than a checklist and it becomes an engine for velocity, belonging, and long-term success.

What we're building

Great onboarding is more than a warm welcome to us. It’s like a well-crafted elevator pitch. It helps the developer hit that aha moment, where suddenly the project makes sense, the roadmap is clear, and their role in it clicks. That clarity is what unlocks contribution. That clarity is what scales.

We’re building a system that turns onboarding into a guided experience, one that scales with your team, respects engineers’ time, and enables them to do their best work from day one. Whether you're hiring juniors or seasoned pros, zyme delivers clarity. Because when onboarding is done right, it’s not just faster, it’s transformational.