Question: What is on-boarding new employees like with that system? How long does it take you to get people up to speed and being productive? I would suppose the lack of rules makes them fast in the beginning and in the end they are contributing to the mess in their own special way, doubling down on the technical debt.
I can't really answer that question completely accurately. I was a very odd case/hire compared to those both before and after as far as I can tell.
I mostly interface with outside developers for integration purposes and I never really had a normal on boarding process.
I'm just a random developer with no authority/power.
That said, my best guess is:
> 1) What is on-boarding new employees like with that system?
They get an intranet project that is relatively harmless and helps them learn the common library -> they get assigned projects on the main site and get progressively larger features to implement. There is no real documentation beyond the actual codebase and asking people questions.
> 2) How long does it take you to get people up to speed and being productive?
No clue. I'd guess 2 months based on how quickly I switched from "intranet projects" to integrating Amazon MWS, 3rd parties, etc.
> 3) I would suppose the lack of rules makes them fast in the beginning and in the end they are contributing to the mess in their own special way, doubling down on the technical debt.
More or less, yes. An example would be we now have 3 partial versions of the same intranet application. The super old one, the one I built before handing it off to the new guy, and the new guy's version [because he didn't like my version].
