Your Onboarding Is a Hazing Ritual and You Call It Agile

Familiar scene: you join a new team and are greeted by a wall of Jira tickets, documentation from 2016, and a colleague muttering about sprints. Sounds like another day in Agile wonderland? The author of the article on dhung.dev argues that such onboarding is nothing less than hazing, wrapped in corporate jargon.

Why it hurts

Developers are a patient bunch, but even we have limits. When instead of a clear project introduction you're thrown into pull requests without context, it's like playing Minesweeper blindfolded. And if they also expect you to "hit the ground running" — congratulations, you're in an initiation ritual where the bonfire is replaced by a daily stand-up.

How is this different from real Agile?

Agile is about iteration and adaptation. But when onboarding is a one-time week-long ordeal, it's not Agile — it's process legacy code. Good onboarding should be like CI/CD: automated, transparent, and with rollback capability. Not like a Friday evening release — scary and unpredictable.

What to do?

• Document the process. Don't make the newbie piece together a puzzle from scattered notes.
• Assign a mentor. Not just "look over there," but someone who'll answer questions even at 2 AM (kidding, but almost).
• Hold an onboarding retrospective. Ask the new hire after a month: "What hurt?" — and fix it.

Comment from METABYTE studio: We've been through onboarding quests ourselves, so in our projects we ensure clear documentation and a smooth ramp-up. No drum circles, but with a sense of humor.