By Glue Team
A new engineer joins your team. Onboarding is chaos: "Where does authentication happen? How do I run the system locally? What database schema should I know? Where are the tests?"
Weeks pass. The engineer is productive only 60% capacity because they're still learning the codebase. By month three, they're starting to be effective. By month six, they're fully ramped.
Six months of partial productivity costs $120K+ per hire at senior engineer salaries. Reduce that to six weeks, and you save $100K+ per hire.
Glue cuts onboarding from 6 months to 6 weeks.
Traditional onboarding:
This is expensive for the company and frustrating for new hires.
Glue becomes the always-available, tireless mentor:
Codebase tour: New hire opens Glue and explores interactively:
Pattern discovery: New hire learns conventions:
Answering questions in real-time: Instead of interrupting a senior engineer with "Where's the user service?", new hire queries Glue and gets instant answers.
Self-service learning: New hire can explore independently, reducing dependency on mentors and speeding autonomy.
| Metric | Traditional | With Glue |
|---|---|---|
| Time to productivity | 12 weeks at 50% capacity | 4 weeks at 80% capacity |
| Cost of onboarding | $120K (mentor + reduced productivity) | $20K (Glue + reduced productivity) |
| Senior engineer interruptions | 20+ hours per new hire | 5 hours per new hire |
| New hire satisfaction | Medium (slow ramp is frustrating) | High (self-service learning, less frustration) |
| Knowledge retention | 30% (they forget what they heard) | 80% (they learn by exploring, reading code) |
For every 5 new hires per year: $500K saved. Plus retained context when senior engineers leave.
Create an onboarding plan: "New engineers should understand auth first, then data model, then payment service." Glue helps explore in that order.
Embed Glue in onboarding docs: "How does our system work?" → Link to Glue's architecture visualization. New hire explores interactively instead of reading static docs.
Use Glue for code review: New hire reads code → asks questions in Glue (codebase context) instead of bothering mentor.
Track onboarding metrics: Measure time-to-first-PR, time-to-productive, mentor interrupt time. Watch these improve as new hires use Glue.
Before: New hire joins, is productive in 6 months, costs $120K to onboard including lost mentor productivity.
After: New hire joins, is productive in 6 weeks, costs $20K to onboard, and senior engineers save 15+ hours each. Across 5 hires = $500K saved + 75 hours freed for senior engineers to focus on building.
Q: Will Glue replace onboarding mentors? A: No. Mentors guide strategy and culture; Glue answers technical questions. Together, they're much more powerful. Senior engineers move from constant question-answering to high-level guidance.
Q: How do we use Glue for onboarding if our codebase is very large and complex? A: Glue handles complex codebases well—that's where visibility is needed most. Start with high-level architecture (how do the pieces fit?), then drill into specific modules as new hire focuses on their area.
Q: What if our codebase is undocumented and chaotic? A: Glue reveals what's actually there, even if documentation is missing. Use Glue to show new hires the real architecture, patterns, and conventions. It's more accurate than outdated docs.
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