We’ve all been there.
New badge. New laptop. New Slack channels. New faces in a gallery of tiny squares. And somewhere in your inbox or HR portal: your Onboarding Plan.
On paper, the purpose of that plan is straightforward:
“Enable you to get started with the real work as soon as possible, so you can start delivering the results expected from you.”
In reality, the quality of that experience varies wildly.
I’ve seen onboarding plans that last two weeks, others that stretch to three months, and a lot that hover around that one-month mark. I’ve also seen everything from world-class, thoughtful onboarding experiences to completely chaotic, copy-pasted plans that feel like someone dumped a wiki on your head and wished you good luck.
And right in the middle of this mess sits a key character: the Onboarding Buddy.
This article is about both: the onboarding plan and the buddy, and how they can either set you up for a strong, compounding career… or quietly sabotage you before you ever get a fair shot.