Owner: @lop • live

FAQ for New Joiners

New joiners can self-serve most answers without waiting for a reply. Scan the FAQ or Browse the runbooks index.

Process & Culture

How formal are our meetings?

Stand-ups: casual, 5-10 min updates
Planning: structured, bring questions
Retros: safe space, speak freely
1:1s: Your agenda, use it for career chat

What should I work on first?

Your manager assigns initial tasks. Good starter issues are tagged good-first-issue. After 2 weeks, you'll pick up regular sprint work.

How do code reviews work?

Expect first review within 4 business hours
Reviews focus on: correctness, readability, test coverage
"Nit" comments are optional to address
Approvers can merge (or you merge after approval)

How do I ask for help?

Try to unblock yourself for 20-30 min
Search docs and past conversations
Ask in team channel with context (what you tried, error messages)
For urgent: DM whoever is on-call (see rotation doc)

Pro tip: Saying what you've already tried speeds up help

What meetings should I attend?

Required:

Team stand-up (daily)
Sprint planning (bi-weekly)
Retrospectives (bi-weekly)

Optional but useful:

Guild meetings (topic-specific)
Office hours (ask experts anything)
Show & tell (demos)

Learning & Growth

How do I learn the codebase?

Start with README in main repos
Pick a small bug fix to trace through code
Pair with team members
Read recent PRs to see what's changing

When can I ship to production?

After you've:

Merged 2-3 PRs successfully
Shadowed a deployment
Understand rollback procedure
Feel confident (if not, that's okay - just ask)

Usually by week 3-4.

How do I give feedback?

To peers: directly, or in retros
To manager: 1:1s or anytime via DM
To process: retros or #team-feedback channel
Anonymous: feedback form (link in handbook)

Jargon Decoder

PR: Pull Request
LGTM: Looks Good To Me (approval comment)
WIP: Work In Progress
POC: Proof of Concept
RFC: Request for Comments (design doc)
On-call: Rotation for handling production issues

Policy → Action in 10 seconds

Rule of thumb: Submit any expense within 14 days.
Action today: If your last receipt is older than 10 days, submit it now.
If unclear: Ask "Which date controls eligibility?" then follow the SLA.

Need more detail? Read the public-safe pattern: Expenses: Policy → Action

Still stuck?

Ping @your-onboarding-buddy assigned in week 1
Ask in #general channel
DM your manager

Remember: There are no dumb questions in your first 90 days (or ever).

Start overview — Orients you to the full doc system.
Wayfinding shortcuts — When you need a specific runbook or guide fast.
Playbook canon — Deep patterns referenced throughout this FAQ.

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