To You, Who Will Join 8Percent as a Backend Developer

To help new backend developers adjust, the team created a new onboarding process led by a primary buddy. Previously, information scattered across Slack, Confluence, GitHub, and other places had to be gathered and delivered on the spot by the buddy, which increased both the buddy's burden and the new hire's dependence on them.

Onboarding runs for 5 business days after joining. The team first organized what needed to be done, then set goals and principles, and designed activities accordingly. The design rationale was supplemented with buddy experiences (including from the most recent new hire), interviews with the Backend team leader, an HR representative, and the CTO.

The onboarding content was organized into three parts.

• Environment setup: signing up for essential tools, building the development environment
• Culture understanding: grasping work processes, company and team culture, and development culture
• Knowledge acquisition: learning the code structure, server deployment process, and basic domain knowledge

There were two onboarding goals: to proceed consistently and efficiently without depending on any individual or buddy, and to give new hires a positive impression of the company and team through onboarding. To achieve this, three principles were established: structure, sense of achievement, and reducing burden.

Structure was implemented through documentation and open sharing. The onboarding process is managed as a public Confluence page, allowing the whole team to see progress and participate in some activities, and it was made editable by anyone so that feedback from new hires could also be reflected.

Sense of achievement focused on getting new hires to take the initiative. They check their progress by completing checklists and missions, and are encouraged to contribute to actual outputs early on—such as adding themselves to the team member introduction page or leaving code reviews on GitHub.

To reduce burden, the amount of required activities was adjusted and optional activities were marked with priority. The set workload was designed to be light enough that 5 days' worth of missions could be finished in a single day if needed, leaving new hires time to organize themselves and settle in at their own pace.

The completed onboarding consists of a checklist, daily missions, and notes. The checklist gathers basic tasks such as account registration, development environment setup, and security configuration, along with tips and links for tasks that frequently caused people to get stuck, like purchasing a PyCharm license or registering an SSH public key.

Daily missions are small tasks performed from Day 1 to Day 5, designed to be easy to complete once the checklist and notes are done. They center on activities that contribute to the company and team or connect to actual work, helping new hires quickly build practical experience on their own.

The notes document compiles the knowledge and culture the Backend team needs to know. It covers the team's way of working, the styleguide, server deployment process, Sentry, Splunk, external integration services, and more, organized by importance as ★★★ / ★★☆ / ★☆☆ to lower the burden.

The first run went well. Two new hires, Songhee and Chan-gyu, mentioned in their sprint retrospective that onboarding helped them settle in systematically, and onboarding proceeded smoothly even when their buddy was out on Day 4. Interest across the team also grew—a core banking domain lecture was held, and the new hires directly improved the local development environment guide, styleguide, and glossary.

Both of them completed the checklist and daily missions in 4 days, and Songhee's schedule wasn't derailed even when a new laptop had to be issued to her the day after joining. Going forward, the team plans to collect new-hire feedback more systematically and connect questions that go beyond the team to company-wide onboarding sessions.

Finally, this process emphasizes that onboarding should not be just a mechanical procedure, but an opportunity for new team members to naturally build relationships and a sense of belonging. Onboarding that combines structure with care makes a new hire's first experience even better.