> In this case, the HR dept has created a process for HR people: mostly extroverted who think "fun" is about chasing things around and answering pointless questions.

Yeah, especially since she mentioned that there seemed to be "junior" (possibly new college hires) programmers in the mix. Sometimes when you're senior you just gotta roll your eyes and sit through the BS.

Since it's done so rarely and tends to be unique to the employee--onboarding ALWAYS results in a disaster somewhere--as a manager it's my job to make sure that I put the fire out, squash the problems, and get my new employees up and running.