That pretty much describes my department, for the 25 years I ran it.
Of course, it was a fairly small team of experienced, high-functioning, engineers, so I doubt it represented the “industry standard” shop. We hired people with many years of experience, and I found it productive to let each one have a great deal of agency and control of their development environment.
Like adding yourself to a maintainer list or some prepared token handholding task? Or what could you possibly do in the first day before having the time to read the code.
Much of the online ranting (and frankly, hate), including in this thread, would be avoided if people would just spend some time getting to know the human beings behind the text on their screen. The very thing that has been called "infantilizing" somewhere else in this thread.
I do agree that meeting your coworkers and talking to them can indeed have very beneficial effects. I just don't see how a picture of a face helps that in any way. That's the connection that just doesn't seem to exist. It seems like people who want video on on Zoom calls. There are very few cases where that's a bonus.
And yes, I agree that the people who called getting to know their peers via an onboarding process that was probably somewhat corny "infantilizing" seem way offbase.
My point was only that pushing (any) code to prod on day 1 doesn’t have to be an entitled fantasy.
I never even considered how people could fail at those tests (e.g. privacy procedures) until I saw someone that was truly not interested in them take them.
Now I understand why the stupid things require you to spend at least 2 seconds looking at the answer slowly fading in before they allow you to click.
For some people the solution is not understanding the material. It’s just clicking every answer in rapid succession until they get the magic combination.
Myself, I am very "getting my hands dirty"-oriented, and the corporate onboarding goes over very poorly with me too. Sit through multiple days of material that is dumbed down to the company's lowest common denominator. Having to be giddy with other new hires in departments that you will never have any interaction with anymore. Kill me now. So, if the trainers just go through the motions, why wouldn't the original poster and I just put in the mere minimum to get through it, and start my real job...?
Oh, my real job... in the cafetaria with no desk? So, sure, the manager can forget to put the request in. But would a manager not know that you start, schedule a welcome meeting with you on the first day, touch base a few times in your first week? Plenty of chances, still no desk! It's ridiculous, but I am not surprised. If you don't think that is ridiculous, then, I don't know, maybe you've been conditioned to that sort of environment. With no snark I wish you much joy in your employment there, but then please let the original poster and myself move on^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrun for the hills.
Here's what onboarding should look like for an Engineering role: you come in at 9:00, do the bare minimum with HR, meet your team, set up your computer, and before the end of your first day, you have your first code changes in production. Then you go home with a feeling of accomplishment. Then, during the rest of the week, some onboarding meetings will happen, but at least you have started with the most important place: your team.