Of the myriad challenges in scaling up an engineering organization, onboarding new employees is probably the least well-understood. There are relatively common solutions for large-scale recruitment, finance and administration, but onboarding remains a question that many organizations struggle with. At Wix we've been struggling with massive scaling challenges: over the last two years our company headcount has doubled itself, and we had to learn to cope with the influx while maintaining velocity. In this talk we'll share with you the story of how we set up Wix Academy, an engineer-driven training organization, the solutions we've developed (and still are!), and what we've learned in our first year of operation. A presentation given at Velocity 2016 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands (previously at BuildStuff 2015 in Vilnius, Lithuania).

1. Onboarding
at Scale
Tomer Gabel
Velocity 2016 Amsterdam
Image: Akheree Monajat (CC BY-SA 3.0)

2. Wix is…
• A web publishing platform
• Distributed R&D
– Tel-Aviv (Israel)
– Be’er-Sheva (Israel)
– Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine)
– Kiev (Ukraine)
– Vilnius (Lithuania)
• Growing rapidly
– Jul 2013: 120 engineers
– Now: 400+ engineers

3. Scaling up is hard
Fundamental premise:

4. RESEARCHImage: Martine Perret / UNMEER (CC BY-ND 2.0)

5. Guilds and Companies
Company
Guild

6. Our Customers
Server Guild
React Guild
NG Guild

7. Challenges
Onboarding
Doctrine
Recruiting

8. Proposed Solution:

9. Product Suite
KickstartTraining Kit Crash Course
Images: Jeff Robins (CC BY 2.0), Vernon Cunningham (Public Domain), Paul Fisher (CC BY-SA 2.0)

10. Training Kit

11. Training Kit: Customers
As a Guild Lead, I want to:
• Start onboarding early
• Reduce overhead
• Have quality reference
material
Image: KCNA

12. Training Kit: Customers
As a Team Lead, I want to:
• Simplify training of new
hires
• Minimize disruption to
my team
• Have quality reference
material
Image: John Kennicutt, USMC (Public Domain)

13. Training Kit: Customers
As a new hire, I want to:
• Understand the
technology stack
• Be productive quickly
• Learn on my own
(and not be a pest)
Image: Cubmundo (BY-SA 2.0)

14. Training Kit: Design Goals
Guided self-learning
Customizable
Based on external resources

15. Kickoff
• Meet the Guild Lead
– Validate assumptions
– Identify key (technical)
partners
• Scope definition
– Meet key partners
– Set scope and expectations
– Generate “bucket list” of
desirable topics
• Review and prioritize

16. Development
• Guild Days
– Ask for some volunteers
– Host them for a full day
– Volunteers pick subjects
– Volunteers search &
evaluate material

17. Development
• Postprocessing
– By a professional
training developer
– Wording, formatting
– Consistent structure

18. Feedback Collection
• Per-subject feedback
– Simple web form
– Highlights substantial issues (if
any)
• Guild Day (one-off)
– Technical review by experts
• Interviews (one-off)
– Team leads
– New hires

19. Lessons Learned
Assumptions
• Content
– Only developers can
evaluate content
– Minor post-processing
– Focus on learning
• Structure
– Topics are atomic units
– Customizable set/order
Reality
– Dedicated professional
can take over
– Most of the actual work
– Need actionable content
(exercises, koans etc.)
– Topics are interrelated
– Modules are necessary

20. Lessons Learned
Assumptions
• Marketing
– R&D will self-market
– No need for special effort
• Maintenance
– Mostly ad-hoc
– Developer pull requests
• Future efforts
– Proper UX
Reality
– Little known, little used
– Initial push insufficient
– Constant, significant work
– Little participation
– Not that useful, for now

21. So what’s next?
1. Dedicated
content/training
developer
2. Revise structure for
modularity
3. Significant in-house
marketing effort
Image: Booyabazooka (CC BY-SA 3.0)

22. Kickstart

23. Kickstart: Overview
Takes juniors as input, outputs web developers
9 weeks, fully salaried
End result: professional web developers

24. Kickstart: Tiers
1. Individual self-learning
2. Teamwork and agile methods
3. Full product lifecycle

25. Kickstart: Challenges
Expensive (salaries, resources)
Tightly coupled recruiting effort
Mentorship and preparation

26. Recruitment
• Unique requirements
– Experience/skill level
– Recruiting in bulk
– Cost mitigation
• A dedicated pipeline
– “Recruiting days”
– Carefully orchestrated

27. Lessons Learned
Why do this?
• The social element
– Company culture
– Built-in “buddy system”
• Sustainable recruiting
– Easy to plan for
– Marketing-bound, really
– Great people!
Why not?
• Expensive
– Facilities, staff, amenities…
– And fully salaried to boot
• Hard to do consistently
– Staff turnover
– Buy-in is a constant effort
– Dedicated staff is critical

28. Crash
Course

29. Crash Course: Overview
Mid- to senior-level onboarding course
Recurring, every ~2 months
3 weeks
End result: a working MVP

30. Crash Course: Rationale
End-to-end production experience
Groups mimic team structure
Focus on methodology, philosophy

31. Crash Course: Challenges
Cost-prohibitive below 10 participants
Requires mix of server/front-end
Mentorship and preparation

32. Planning
• Week 1: Ramp-up
– Heavy on doctrine (TDD, CD)
– Tech stack (Scala, TypeScript)
• Weeks 2-3: Project time
– Guided bootstrapping
– Constant mentorship

33. Lessons Learned
Why do this?
• Break down the wall
– The server-client divide
– Reinforce TDD, CD etc.
– Makes our stack accessible
• Reduces new employee
friction
• Huge marketing boon

34. Lessons Learned
Why not?
• Expensive
– Facilities, staff, amenities…
– And fully salaried to boot
• Tight scheduling
– Lots of ad-hoc adjustments
– Everything needs a backup
• Minimal recruiting rate
Image: Jenny Poole (CC BY 2.0)

35. POST-MORTEMImage: Daniel X. O’Neil (CC BY 2.0)

36. Lessons Learned
• These are long-
running projects
• For best results:
– Assign dedicated staff
– Long-term
• This means you can’t
rely on engineers
– Trust me, I am one…
Program
Manager
Project
Manager
Training
Developer

37. Lessons Learned
• Scaling up is hard
• Doing it ad-hoc works!
• Until it doesn’t
– It’s not about size
– It’s about growth
• Consider ROI carefully!
Image: Damian Gadal (CC BY 2.0)

38. Lessons Learned
• Mentors are your biggest asset
– You need their buy-in
– You need them to come back
• Give them what they need
– “Soft skills” workshops, simulations
– Expectation setting and guidance
– Hold status/venting sessions. Pay attention!

39. Lessons Learned
• These are big projects
• Success is about logistics
– Huge todo list
– Scheduling hell
– Constant interruptions
– Follow-ups
• That’s a lot to keep track of
• Hire a Project Manager.
“Behind every great
leader there was an
even greater
logistician.”
- M. Cox
Image: Rom Logistics (CC BY-SA 3.0)

40. QUESTIONS?
Thank you for listening
tomer@tomergabel.com
@tomerg
http://engineering.wix.com
To contact Wix academy (ask us anything!):
academy@wix.com
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Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.