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Onboarding

Onboarding in Home has two phases: a general meeting run by the general PMs (all new members together, every area presenting), and a deep onboarding inside each area (area PM with their new members). The two are distinct responsibilities and both are necessary.

Home expects self-driven learning

Unlike juniors, Home does not give step-by-step tutorials for every tool. State this explicitly during the general meeting. If a member is not willing to learn on their own, they do not fit in Home. Better to find that out in week one than in week four.

Phase 1. General welcome meeting

Owner: general PMs. When: first Home meeting after applications close. Attendees: all new members, every area PM, both general PMs.

Typical agenda

The four parts below are what the meeting should cover. Times depend on how many new members and how many areas present that year; keep the whole thing under an hour when possible (the Cadence page describes the meeting-length rule in more detail).

  1. Welcome and Home vision.

    • What @Home means inside RoBorregos and RoboCup.
    • What the robot is (FRIDA) and what it does.
    • Macro calendar for the year: TMR (around April), RoboCup (the international competition, dates vary by year), demos.

  2. Each area presents. Home has eight areas, so this is the longest part. For each area, the PM explains:

    • What the area does (what technical problem it solves).
    • Sub-areas they work on and who is active there.
    • What they look for in new members.
    • Tutorials and tools to start studying (videos, codelabs, books).

  3. Area assignment. New members pick an area. Many include a second and third choice in case the first one is full. The general PMs validate the assignment and break ties.

  4. Closing and next steps. Remind everyone that per-area onboarding starts the following week, restate that Home is self-directed, and show where the documentation lives (this site, Home-Docs).

Half the value is the tutorial recommendations

The new member does not know what to study first. If your area uses ROS 2, recommend it explicitly: "start with the official ROS 2 Humble tutorials, then come back to us." Without that, they will stare at code for two weeks and learn nothing.

Phase 2. Per-area onboarding (area PM)

After the general meeting, the area PM takes over the new members assigned to that area. There is no fixed week-by-week program. The area PM gives the new member progressively harder tasks so they get familiar with the code and the area's conventions on their own. Almost everything else is self-directed.

What works in practice

  1. Point them at the area docs. This site has pages per area. For Manipulation, send them to Development → Manipulation → Setup & Build.
  2. Get the technical setup working. Clone the project repo (with --recursive), install Docker, run ./run.sh <area> for the first time (this can take 30+ minutes on slower hardware), confirm they can bring up the basic stack for the area.
  3. Give them a small task early. Something like a pose tweak in xarm_configurations.py for Manipulation, a flag added to a launch file, a docs update. They touch the code, open a PR, and learn the team's conventions through review.
  4. Increase complexity gradually. As they handle the simple tasks well, give them slightly bigger ones that touch more of the area.
  5. Restate that Home is self-directed. Home does not run tutorials for every tool. ROS 2, Docker, Linux: those are on them, with the recommendations from the general meeting as the starting point.

For members without technical background

Some members land in Home because they no longer qualify for juniors by age (see Recruiting). These members usually need extra time before touching the area stack while they learn the basic tools.

The table below is a starting list of public resources that have worked for past members, not an official Home curriculum. Use whatever fits the area best.

If they don't know... Public starting point
Linux / terminal The Missing Semester (MIT)
Python Python official tutorial
Git Pro Git book
Docker Docker getting started
ROS 2 ROS 2 Humble tutorials

Be honest with them: getting comfortable with these tools takes time and they will spend the first weeks on them before touching the project's code. It is normal and expected.

What to publish and where

Resource Where it lives Owner
This documentation home-docs All PMs
Project repo home2 The whole team
Active member roster by area Form / sheet in the RoBorregos Drive General PM
Per-area WhatsApp / Teams channel (varies by area) Area PM

Common mistakes

  • Skipping the general meeting. New members arrive at an area without global context. They do not understand how Home fits inside RoBorregos or RoboCup.
  • Running the general meeting but skipping per-area onboarding. The member floats. They do not even know what to clone.
  • Assuming everyone already knows Docker and ROS 2. If the person comes from juniors or from outside RoBorregos, they probably do not.
  • Not giving them a task in the first weeks. Without something concrete to work on, they lose momentum. The task can be small; the point is they touch the code.
  • Expecting fast results. Home onboarding is self-directed and the first weeks are slow on purpose; that is the cost of the autonomy.