Case study
Halving onboarding time with a buddy program
A structured buddy onboarding that helped new data engineers feel welcomed and become productive twice as fast.
Context
A growing data engineering team, hiring several people in a short time.
Challenge
New joiners took about six weeks to ramp up, and the team needed them sooner.
Approach
- Paired every new joiner with a buddy from day one.
- Gave the buddy role a clear structure, so it wasn’t left to chance.
- Treated onboarding as a process to improve, not a one-off welcome.
Outcome
Ramp-up time dropped from six weeks to three.
What I learned
The fastest way to onboard someone is to make sure they never feel alone with a question.