Answering Questions

No doubt you’ll be answering a lot of people’s questions, that’s what you’re there for! Before jumping in to giving an answer, take a moment to make sure you understand what’s being asked.

Especially when someone is new to a field, questions may be worded weirdly or not make sense at all. If you aren’t sure what they’re looking for, ask for clarification. Answering the “wrong question” just leads to even more confusion!

You should be able to tell why someone is asking a question and what they plan on using that information for. If you can’t, there’s a chance you’re misinterpreting it. Your answer should be directly applicable to the task at hand, unless it’s clearly a situation where a member wants to dig deeper for their own curiosity/interest.

Try to keep answers short and concise. Especially at the start, it’s ok to skip out on the details as it may lead to information overload. It’s probably not helpful to send multi page app notes or long confluence pages when someone’s just starting out.

Don’t forget that you can always call! Communication can be hard over text, some things are much more easily sorted over screen share.

Reviewing Designs

The goal of onboarding is not only to learn some technical concepts, but also to build good habits and understand our workflow. That’s reason to be extra nit picky! Of course corners are cut in a time crunch, but doing so should be a conscious decision. We don’t want to unknowingly cut corners due to a lack of knowledge.

There’s an example onboarding project that I’ve created. In addition to everything being technically correct, the schematic should be readable and layout should be neat! We want to set a good precedent for their following tasks!