Time to productivity (TTP) is the metric measuring how long it takes a new hire to contribute meaningfully to an engineering organization. It tracks the journey from first day to full effectiveness, capturing how well your team converts hiring investment into actual output.
Most engineering teams don't track this metric at all. They should.
When CTOs and VPs of engineering face pressure to scale teams, they focus on hiring speed: how quickly can we fill open positions? But hiring speed without onboarding efficiency is pouring water into a leaky bucket.
Teams can take seven to nine months to get new hires up to speed. In that time, senior engineers are diverted to mentoring, the new hire is frustrated by confusion, and the velocity boost you expected from hiring doesn't materialize.
The best teams get new developers productive in one month. Not because they have better developers, but because they have better systems.
#Why TTP Matters More Than Hiring Speed
#The Velocity Equation
Developer time to productivity has a direct impact on engineering velocity. A team that hires 5 developers who take 9 months to ramp is in a very different position than a team that hires 5 developers who ramp in 2 months.
Consider the math. If a fully productive developer contributes 100% capacity:
Slow onboarding (9 months to productivity):
- Month 1-3: 20% capacity
- Month 4-6: 50% capacity
- Month 7-9: 80% capacity
- First year total: ~50% of full capacity
Fast onboarding (2 months to productivity):
- Month 1: 30% capacity
- Month 2: 70% capacity
- Month 3+: 100% capacity
- First year total: ~90% of full capacity
The fast-onboarding team gets nearly double the effective capacity from the same hire.
The Hidden Cost of Slow Onboarding
New hire onboarding doesn't just affect the new hire. It affects everyone around them.
Senior engineers spend time answering questions, reviewing early PRs, and explaining context. While they're mentoring, they're not building features. This "mentoring tax" compounds when onboarding is slow.
One study found that a buddy assigned to help a new hire spends 10-15 hours per week in direct support during the first month. If onboarding takes 9 months instead of 2, that's 7 additional months of diverted senior engineer time.
#The Retention Connection
Slow onboarding correlates with early turnover. When developers spend months feeling confused and unproductive, they start wondering if they made the right choice.
The average turnover rate for software engineers is roughly 15%. The churn driven by onboarding problems is a $22 billion industry-wide problem.
Developers who reach productivity quickly report higher job satisfaction and longer tenure. They feel competent, valued, and integrated into the team.
#How to Measure Time to Productivity
#Defining "Productive"
The first challenge is defining what "productive" means. Common approaches:
First merged PR: Time from start date to first merged pull request. Easy to measure, but a single PR doesn't indicate sustained productivity.
Sustained PR volume: Time until the new hire's weekly PR count matches the team average. Better indicator but requires more tracking.
Self-assessed productivity: Time until the new hire reports feeling productive. Subjective but captures psychological integration.
Manager assessment: Time until the manager considers them fully ramped. Subjective and varies by manager standards.
Composite measure: Combination of objective metrics (PR volume, review participation) and subjective assessment (self and manager ratings).
The composite approach works best. Objective metrics provide consistency. Subjective assessments capture what metrics miss.
#Measurement Method
Track these data points for each new hire:
Week 1 milestones:
- Development environment fully functional (yes/no)
- First commit pushed (date)
- First PR opened (date)
Month 1 milestones:
- First PR merged (date)
- First code review given (date)
- Onboarding buddy hours logged
Ongoing tracking:
- Weekly PR count
- Weekly review count
- Self-assessment score (1-10 scale): "How productive do you feel?"
- Manager assessment score (1-10 scale): "How productive is this person?"
Define productivity threshold. For example: "Productive = weekly PR count within 80% of team average AND manager assessment score of 7+."
Track time from start date to crossing that threshold. That's your TTP.
#Benchmarking
Once you're measuring TTP, you can benchmark:
Internal benchmark: Compare TTP across teams. If one team onboards in 4 weeks and another takes 16, something is different in their processes.
Historical benchmark: Track TTP over time. Is onboarding getting faster or slower? Changes in documentation, tooling, or team composition affect TTP.
Role-based benchmark: TTP varies by role complexity. Junior developers joining a greenfield project will ramp faster than senior developers joining a complex legacy system.
#Factors That Affect TTP
#Documentation Quality
The single biggest factor in onboarding speed is documentation. Not just "docs exist" but "docs answer the questions new hires actually have."
Good onboarding documentation includes:
- Architecture overview: How systems connect, where data flows, why decisions were made
- Development environment setup: Step-by-step, tested regularly, with troubleshooting for common issues
- Codebase tour: Key directories, naming conventions, where to find things
- Process documentation: How to get PRs reviewed, how to deploy, who to ask about what
- Glossary: Domain-specific terms, internal acronyms, business context
Bad documentation is worse than no documentation. If the setup guide is outdated and causes frustration, it actively harms onboarding.
#Codebase Complexity
Technical debt lengthens onboarding. A clean, well-organized codebase is easier to understand. A tangled, inconsistent codebase requires tribal knowledge that can't be documented.
Teams with high technical debt often say "you just have to learn by doing" because the code is too complicated to explain. That's not wisdom. That's a symptom.
Invest in codebase cleanup as an onboarding investment. Every hour spent reducing complexity saves multiple hours of onboarding confusion.
#Buddy System
Assigning an onboarding buddy accelerates TTP significantly. The buddy answers quick questions, provides context, and catches confusion before it compounds.
Effective buddy programs:
- Assign buddies intentionally (compatible personalities, relevant expertise)
- Set clear expectations (X hours per week available)
- Limit buddy assignments (one buddy, one new hire at a time)
- Rotate buddies (prevent burnout, spread knowledge-sharing skills)
Measure buddy hours as part of TTP tracking. If TTP improves but buddy hours don't decrease proportionally, you're just shifting cost, not reducing it.
#First Project Selection
What work you assign in the first weeks shapes the onboarding experience.
Common mistakes:
- Starting with bugs (context-heavy, frustrating, doesn't show how to build)
- Starting with critical path work (too much pressure, not enough learning)
- Starting with isolated work (doesn't integrate the new hire into the team)
Better approach: First projects should be real (not make-work), bounded (clear scope), and integrating (touching multiple parts of the system with support from multiple team members).
A good first project teaches the codebase while producing useful output. It builds confidence and connections simultaneously.
#Team Composition
Onboarding onto a team of senior engineers is different from onboarding onto a team of mostly junior engineers.
Senior-heavy teams often have implicit knowledge that's never been documented because "everyone knows that." Junior-heavy teams might have documentation but lack mentoring capacity.
Consider team composition when setting TTP expectations. A team that just onboarded three people last quarter has less mentoring capacity than a stable team.
#Reducing TTP: Practical Approaches
#Invest in Developer Experience
Every friction point in the developer experience affects TTP. Slow builds, flaky tests, confusing deployment processes—new hires experience these more acutely than established developers.
Fix the things that frustrate new hires:
- Long build times (new hire spends more time waiting)
- Complex setup processes (new hire hits every edge case)
- Inconsistent tooling (new hire doesn't know what's "normal")
- Poor error messages (new hire can't self-diagnose)
Developer experience improvements help everyone but help new hires most.
#Pre-boarding
Onboarding doesn't start on day one. The time between accepting an offer and starting work can be used productively.
Pre-boarding activities:
- Send equipment early so setup doesn't consume day one
- Share reading materials (architecture docs, blog posts, product overview)
- Connect with future teammates informally
- Complete administrative tasks (accounts, access requests) before start date
A new hire who arrives with laptop configured and context absorbed is days ahead of one who spends the first week waiting for access.
#Structured First Week
The first week sets the tone. Structure it:
Day 1: Welcome, team introductions, culture orientation, workspace setup Day 2: Codebase tour, architecture overview, development environment Day 3: First small PR (even trivial—proves the process works) Day 4: Deeper dive into domain and business context Day 5: First real task assignment, buddy check-in, Q&A
Avoid leaving new hires to "figure it out." The first week shapes their mental model of how the team operates.
#Onboarding Retrospectives
After each new hire reaches productivity, run a retrospective:
- What was confusing?
- What documentation was missing or wrong?
- What should we do differently next time?
- What worked well?
Feed these insights back into the onboarding process. Each cohort should onboard faster than the last.
#Measure Questions Asked
Track questions new hires ask in the first month. Recurring questions indicate documentation gaps or process confusion.
If every new hire asks "how do I run tests locally?" then the test-running documentation needs work. If every new hire asks "who approves production deploys?" then the deployment process needs documentation.
Questions are signals. Use them.
#TTP as a Team Health Metric
Time to productivity isn't just an onboarding metric. It's a team health metric.
Teams with fast TTP typically have:
- Good documentation habits
- Low technical debt
- Clear processes
- Strong mentoring culture
- Reasonable workload (capacity for onboarding)
Teams with slow TTP typically have:
- Tribal knowledge instead of documentation
- High technical debt requiring context to navigate
- Implicit processes that "everyone knows"
- Overloaded engineers with no time to mentor
- Pressure that makes onboarding a low priority
Improving TTP requires improving the team. The metric is a forcing function for engineering excellence.
#What Good TTP Looks Like
Benchmarks vary by organization size and codebase complexity, but rough targets:
Excellent: Under 4 weeks to productivity Good: 4-8 weeks to productivity Average: 2-4 months to productivity Poor: 4+ months to productivity
If your TTP is 6+ months, you're not just slow. You're probably losing people before they ever become productive.
#The Strategic Value of TTP
When you can onboard developers quickly, hiring becomes a flexible tool.
You can scale up for projects and scale down after, knowing that ramp time won't eat most of the project timeline. You can backfill departures without extended capability gaps. You can bring in specialized contractors who contribute quickly.
When TTP is slow, hiring becomes a long-term commitment with delayed payoff. You have to anticipate needs months ahead. Departures create extended pain. Contractors are ineffective because they can't ramp fast enough.
Fast TTP is a strategic capability, not just an HR metric.
#Getting Started
If you're not currently tracking TTP:
Step 1: Define productivity threshold for your context (PR volume, assessment scores, or combination)
Step 2: Start tracking for new hires: first PR, weekly volume, self-assessment, manager assessment
Step 3: Calculate TTP for each new hire (date of productivity threshold crossing minus start date)
Step 4: Run onboarding retrospectives and identify improvement opportunities
Step 5: Track TTP over time and measure the impact of process improvements
Even rough measurement is better than no measurement. Once you're tracking TTP, you'll see where to focus improvements.
#Related Reading
- Building High-Performing Engineering Cultures - Culture that accelerates onboarding
- Developer Burnout: The Metrics Engineering Managers Need - When onboarding goes wrong
- Engineering Team Health Monitoring - Tracking new hire integration
- Code Review Best Practices: A Manager's Guide - Review culture affects onboarding speed
Building high-performing engineering teams starts with supporting every new hire. Coderbuds tracks PR velocity, review participation, and team metrics that help you understand how new team members are integrating. See how your team develops talent.
