Wikimedia Discovery/Team/Onboarding

Team page: Search and Discovery

Note that if you are seeing this in a page who's URL ends in /YourName then you should feel free to strike through the steps are you finish them. If you find an error in the instructions then go fix them on the template.

= Stuff for you to do on first day =
 * IRC
 * Get an IRC client. I like Quassel. weechat and irssi are good if you like text interfaces.
 * Connect to Freenode and register your user name.
 * Join #wikimedia-search
 * I (Nik aka manybubbles) will be in there and we'll use this room to keep up
 * Skim the People to meet/First day section below and keep some of the irc names in mind. Chat with them when we get bored of the tasks below and need a break.
 * NOTE: Some of these tasks can be found by reading the new hire information but I'm making an effort to grab the important bits.
 * Read the Systems Guide for New Hires
 * Google Mail/Calendar
 * Follow the systems guide above to get access to gmail and your calendar.
 * (Optional) In Gmail, enable Settings -> Labs -> Undo Send and press Save Changes. Go back to settings and change the timeout to 30 seconds
 * Add these calendars to your calendar calendars: "WMF Staff Calendar", "WMF Sick/Vacation Tracking Calendar", and "WMF Fun & Learning"
 * The WMF Fun & Learning calendar isn't super useful for remote employees
 * In Calendar go to Settings and tick "Speedy Meetings" and set work hours
 * IRC (part two!)
 * Join #wikimedia-search, #wikimedia, #mediawiki, #wikimedia-operations, #wikimedia-office, #wikimedia-dev
 * Learn about cloaks and request one
 * It can take a few days for the cloak stuff to be resolved.
 * Once you have a cloak you can join/get invited to #wikimedia-staff and #mediawiki_security <--- note the underscore. It has a history.
 * Verify WMF access to Wikitech (LDAP), Office (SUL), Wikipedia (SUL), and Wikimedia Foundation (SUL)
 * The instructions for these are in the systems guide above
 * Schedule staff photo (just list you name here)
 * Or you can list yourself as not wanting to have your photo up by adding your name under the cloak of invisibility list.
 * Add yourself to the team page
 * Subscribe to some mailing lists
 * The public search list
 * The private search list
 * Wikitech-l the Paper of record for changes to MediaWiki.
 * Introduce youself on wikimedia-search.

= People to meet = You'll want to meet these people soon, some on the first day! You should probably introduce yourself over IRC and ask to schedule a Google hangout with them.

First day

 * Tomasz aka tomasz, own manager. He is also on US West Coast time.
 * Tell him everything is going great and that the instructions are easy to follow but you are still overwhelmed by the reading you have to do.
 * Tell him that you found some errors in the instruction and fixed the template.
 * I'm just kidding.
 * Ask him to give you an overview of how the foundation is organized, teams and such.
 * Also ask about how the SaD team is organized internally.
 * He'll want to talk to you one on one a few times in the first week.
 * Introduce yourself to Kevin aka meeple27, our team practices coach. He is on US West Coast time.
 * Ask him to add you to the appropriate meetings.
 * Ask him to explain how we communicate and track our work.
 * Ask him how he fits in with the rest of the team.

First few days

 * Dan aka Deskana, our lead product owner. He is on US West Coast time.
 * Ask him about how product works at the Foundation and with in the SaD team.
 * Testing overview - in house and Specialists Guild
 * Wikimedia project overview - what are our projects and who uses them
 * Moiz aka moizesyed, our lead designer. He is also on US West Coast time.
 * Ask about how UX/Design works with the rest of the SaD team.


 * Tech Lead
 * Setup IRC . Setup on common wiki channels . Attach an IRC cloak.
 * Setup Gerrit Access. Explore Gerrit workflow. Review Gerrit tutorial . Install "Git review".
 * Apply for access to stat servers (currently stat1002 and stat1003)
 * Apply for event logging access
 * Schedule intro to API meeting
 * Subscribe to the appropriate Gerrit review group(s).


 * Hire
 * Setup your account for Wikitech and Gerrit following How to become a MediaWiki hacker instructions. Commonly, the username you use is your internet handle (i.e., not a (WMF) username), but you will want to use your @wikimedia.org email address for the email address to receive Gerrit email notifications.
 * Review HR's onboarding page
 * Fix a small bug. Plenty abound, we can pick one as time gets nearer. Get the patch through Gerrit and get it merged.
 * Fix a couple more small bugs to get a clearer idea of how things are
 * Take up a card for a full feature and implement it
 * Review team norms and values (Team, first retrospective after start date)

= Onboarding (iOS specific) =
 * Architecture overview - AutoLayout, Storyboards, not using 'promises' etc. (Monte)
 * Data objects overview (Brion)
 * Networking objects overview (Monte)
 * Must-haves overview - version compatibility, autosizing text labels, landscape / portrait compatibility, tablet scaling, no text truncation, etc (Monte)

= Onboarding (Android specific) =
 * Architecture overview (Dmitry/Bernd)
 * Libraries used (okhttp, picasso, acra, photoview, etc.)
 * JavaScript bridge
 * Grunt, JavaScript bundle generation
 * Overview of scripts (Dmitry/Bernd)
 * Fetching CSS assets from betalabs and/or vagrant
 * Generating PNG assets from SVGs
 * Building release APKs (beta/production/custom channels)
 * Request access to caesium (to deploy to releases.wikimedia.org)
 * Grant access to Play Store dev console (Adam)
 * Overview of TranslateWiki and our TWN sync process (Bernd)
 * (Optional) Add the Android SDK Search Chromium / Chrome extension.