I wanted someone on my team to be able to hit the ground running, and I found that there were predictable areas where I'd spend my time ramping someone up. I realized that I could front-load that work before this person joined the company so that they could do a lot of their learning async and use their time with me for questions and clarifications.

There was no formal approval process for this - I did talk to many other PM managers to learn what had worked and what hadn't. The idea of flowing from learning --> representing was something I pulled from other PM Managers; a helpful push since I like to keep people in learning mode.

I like to make ~80% of the work async so that the new hire can fill any non-meeting time with ramping up. That's the docs and dashboards sections.

Then, I ask them to tag me in any questions in the doc because I can often answer (or point them to the answer) in less than a minute.

Then in a 1:1 (which I'll have 3-4/week for the first two weeks) I can answer more strategic/philosophical questions where it would be really tough to type out the nuance of the answer.

I find that there are 3 layers of information:

General to the company. These don't change. E.g. Facebook talks about DAP (Daily Active People) instead of DAU (Daily Active Users).

Specific to the team (Groups in this case). These will change less often and act as common currency between the new person and other teams within the org.

Specific to the role/team. These change (in fact, part of the new hires role may be to better define metrics) but it's helpful to see the history of how the team has defined success and what they learned during each stage.

Explanation of top 15-20 acronyms that you’re going to come across, what they mean, and why they matter. Ideally linked to a deck or dashboard that explains what’s happened in that space.

To not overwhelm, I build a story of what’s happened in this space to quickly get someone up to speed. As it gets closer to current date, I’ll add more detailed docs.

An explanation of decision forums and some color on how certain stakeholders/execs like to make decisions. Don’t write anything here you wouldn’t want those stakeholders to see! So more along the lines of “this is a data-driven meeting” or “this is a jam/vision type meeting where we ideate” vs. “John’s a jerk.”

Be sure to indicate which meetings they should attend, which they’re optional, and which they should lead and/or influence. For meetings that they lead, list out how long you’ll be there while they shadow, then you shadow, then they fully takeover.

Chris Hatfield 

This document is what I use to walk someone through how to learn about their role on their first day and becomes a defacto task list for the first month or so.

Welcome! Below is a list of people, resources, and notes to help get you oriented. Please reach out to me, or anyone else on the team, if you have any questions (there is no such thing as a stupid question, especially if it's about an acronym or piece of Facebook company jargon). This will be a firehose of information for at least the next 1-2 months, so don't feel like you need to know everything right away.

Orient yourself to Facebook and Groups Distribution: read overall Facbeook docs (see “FB groups section)

> (PM on Groups Core) for Groups 101 presentation

Understand the Groups product backwards and forward. Join groups, participate, start a group, moderate. Figure out where the edges are between those flows and write down questions on everything that doesn’t make sense. Your mind will never be as fresh/unbiased by how we do things than it is in your first few weeks!

Start contributing (align w/ your manager on what this look like)

Start representing (e.g. weekly / bi-weekly updates; reviews)

How do you book a meeting room with the calendar tool

What goals and outcomes does Facebook care about and why?

What are other teams in the Groups org doing? Who are the key leaders and partners on those teams?

Who is your support team? (hint: I’m on it)

What has your team done the past 6/12/18 months? What strategies worked? What frameworks are still relevant? What mistakes did we make that we learned from.

 channels to Groups users (News Feed, Notifications, Groups Mall). What purpose does each of these serve and how are they different? What state of mind is someone in when they land on these surfaces?

What does the Distribution team do? How is it organized?

Understand the Facebook teams you'll work with, what their goals are, and what their operating cadence is. Do our goals generally align with theirs or are they a platform team that will get lots of requests from people?

Develop, own, and represent the Distribution strategy for Groups across Member Journey and Community Journey. Where does content ranking provide a lever to drive value to people using the product? What other levers should we invest in to ensure people get the value from the Groups that they’re a part of?

Each week, you’ll write a summary of what your team has accomplished, where you’re stuck, and what’s coming next. The purpose of these updates is not just to hold our team accountable, but to ensure that partner teams and executive stakeholders understand key information as they’re making decisions about adjacent strategies. These updates are also a great way to celebrate team wins (I like to call out ICs that don’t typically get a lot of visibility by name for their work).

Each week plan on publishing what the team has shipped, learnt, and made progress on. I usually structure mine:

Metrics vs. goal, with explanations as to big movements up or down

Progress (this has learnings, next steps on big projects, milestones hit, etc.)

Keep a blank doc with this structure open throughout the week and add notes, links to launches, analyses, etc so you only synthesize at the end of the week.

Another Note on Communication at Facebook

Things move quickly here and a LOT is happening. I find it essential to document what happens in meetings and post to the relevant group so that people have a point of reference and everyone is on the same page as to what we agreed on in the meeting. Take the last 2 minutes of the meeting to recap what was discussed/decided + next steps; write it down as you’re figuring it out and BOOM you’ve got postable meeting notes to the team channel(s).

Typically, posting more openly in a Workplace group is better than email, but you can use your judgment on when email is better.

Let your team know how you prefer to be communicated with (chat, email, workplace, etc).

Dashboards for your teams’ operational metrics

Exec dashes for the org to understand what they’re looking at daily

1-2 docs on the history of this space, what we’ve learned, what was accomplished. Year end review docs / exec updates from annual planning work well here.

Key learnings - what do we know? UXR, DS studies

Key launches - what did we ship? Did it work? Why/why not?

What’s the context for the situation the company and/or industry are in - notes from leadership

Ask people in your 1:1s what other groups/email lists/slack channels you should be in; I'll add more as I think of them as well.

Set a reminder for ~day 30 to update your notification settings. By then you'll know which groups are more noise than signal for you and you can safely turn off notifications.

Where else do they need to be added? Sharepoint, Google Folders, Dropbox, etc

I'm typically in the office from 9am - 4:30pm and work on the shuttles to/from work or in between taking care of the kids (8:00am on the front end, 5:30pm on the latter).

I try to not work at home as I need to re-energize but may occasionally answer emails/comments at odd hours if I'm up with one of the kids. I don't expect you to respond to these immediately and you should wait until normal working hours/whenever is convenient to you. If something is legitimately urgent (rare) I'll flag it as such. I’ll also do my best to schedule email/workplace posts to working hours but may forget.

When you’re in these 1:1, spend 25 minutes asking them their take on the team, direction of the org/company, and product features and stop to ask questions if you don’t understand. Then be sure to leave 2 minutes at the end to ask them who else you should talk to and what you should ask those people about. Don't stop until you're getting all repeat names and topics.

Product Manager Onboarding for Community Products at Facebook

Onboarding Doc: Facebook > Groups Distribution

Onboarding Plan

Overall Progress Arc

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