Sounds like a dreadful place to work. You have to meet a bunch of people from over a dozen different departments, who you'll never talk to again? Meaningless mottoes and personality tests? A scavenger hunt?! All that crap before you even touch a computer?
Count me out. The information I need to start a job can be written on one side of a single sheet of paper.
Just on your personality test point, the Birkman Assessment mentioned in the article is absolutely the pinnacle of personality assessment. It's not like the meaningless toy tests like MBTI/Hogan/16pf you may have experienced before. It covers the usual motivation and behaviour pieces but it is unique in surfacing the underlying needs and stress reactions which often have no correlation to your visible 'normal' behaviour that other people see. Really helpful in determining your approach to different members of the team as well as giving you the common language to explain your needs to other people. In short it's both insightful and actionable for you and your team members in your personal and professional life. Plus it's stable over time, so you take the assessment once and have 20+ years of value from it.
Disclaimer: I work for a company that uses the Birkman Assessment but no relation to MailChimp other than as a user of their newsletter services.
I don't know, I know about four people who work there, and I'm sure they will never leave MailChimp. They absolutely love it. In Atlanta, MailChimp is where everyone wants to work, but it's hard to get in unless you're seriously great at what you do.
Haha the sibling posts don't understand what company architecture is. Like software architecture, it's a skill unto itself.
What Mailchimp is doing is fantastic.
Disclosure: I've never been affiliated with Mailchimp. I just think more companies need to refocus on onboarding and training instead of complaining of a talent shortage. It's a market opportunity people!
I think that can be aimed at solving a different problem to the one superficially described.
I've seen places that take 4-5 weeks for a sysadmin to assist a developer through how to get a development environment going. That is to say, I've been a sysadmin in a place that chose that approach.
Putting the work in with containers or vagrant and a reasonable CI and workflow that just lets people get in front of the codebase and change something is an incredible Godsend and I hope to always have that approach in future. Whether someone actually pushes a fix for something that day should be a side issue.
Outside the personality test which would weird me out a little, seems like something I'd love to have as my first week. I can figure out the code side of work on my own, but getting a leg up in figuring out who I'm working with and how everyone interacts would be so helpful!
Kudos to the company for taking onboarding seriously. Most places are abysmal at it. But then again, I've recently been working at places that leverage a lot of contractors/consultants to get work done. The attitude seems to be, "why bother giving them context? They are just here to labor and then be gone."
Yes, it really is special. As you said, a few companies in tech do it. And they have a tremendous advantage.
My overwhelming experience at companies ranging from small $1-5MM revenue shops to >$100MM startups has shown onboarding to be an ad-hoc afterthought. No conscious design.
Many of these companies don't understand how much it's hurting them.
As I've grown more senior, I've learned to onboard myself... seeking out knowledgeable individuals and teasing out the big picture. This is not the default for more junior developers. And thus they lag like an unspun turbo, whining as they try to spin up.
To have full-spectrum -- internal- and external-faced -- onboarding baked into the company culture is a tremendous advantage. It promotes a clear, razor-sharp, global context that allows individuals to move faster with greater alignment.
[+] [-] db48x|8 years ago|reply
Count me out. The information I need to start a job can be written on one side of a single sheet of paper.
[+] [-] mjmasn|8 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: I work for a company that uses the Birkman Assessment but no relation to MailChimp other than as a user of their newsletter services.
[+] [-] beckler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|8 years ago|reply
Kudos Mailchimp!
EDIT: Lots of sibling posts raining on their parade; if you're not interested in the culture and business as a whole, maybe consult instead?
[+] [-] Denzel|8 years ago|reply
What Mailchimp is doing is fantastic.
Disclosure: I've never been affiliated with Mailchimp. I just think more companies need to refocus on onboarding and training instead of complaining of a talent shortage. It's a market opportunity people!
[+] [-] technion|8 years ago|reply
I've seen places that take 4-5 weeks for a sysadmin to assist a developer through how to get a development environment going. That is to say, I've been a sysadmin in a place that chose that approach.
Putting the work in with containers or vagrant and a reasonable CI and workflow that just lets people get in front of the codebase and change something is an incredible Godsend and I hope to always have that approach in future. Whether someone actually pushes a fix for something that day should be a side issue.
[+] [-] moonka|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caleblloyd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Denzel|8 years ago|reply
Mailchimp believes onboarding is company-critical. And their turnover rate speaks for itself.
There are plenty of other places to work.
[+] [-] OpenDrapery|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Denzel|8 years ago|reply
My overwhelming experience at companies ranging from small $1-5MM revenue shops to >$100MM startups has shown onboarding to be an ad-hoc afterthought. No conscious design.
Many of these companies don't understand how much it's hurting them.
As I've grown more senior, I've learned to onboard myself... seeking out knowledgeable individuals and teasing out the big picture. This is not the default for more junior developers. And thus they lag like an unspun turbo, whining as they try to spin up.
To have full-spectrum -- internal- and external-faced -- onboarding baked into the company culture is a tremendous advantage. It promotes a clear, razor-sharp, global context that allows individuals to move faster with greater alignment.
I love what MailChimp is doing.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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