The Seven Deadly Sins of Developer Onboarding

on YouTube ↗18m

" summary

Seven specific failures appear: docs that read like nonsense and accumulate 43,000 issues with 8,000 open, onboarding flows where a get started button drops users into nothing, versioned docs that send Google searches to outdated releases, funnels that ask for money or CAPTCHA too early, community forums used as support instead of fixing docs, and not owning SDKs (PayPal Ruby gems show 0.34 and orphaned 0.03 libs, Twitter surfaces ~79,000 libraries). Clear fixes: runnable examples with credentials and owning key SDKs.

AI-written summary · about

" chapters (10)

1. 0:00Introduction and background
2. 2:55First deadly sin: Bad demos
3. 5:15Second sin: Empty onboarding
4. 6:31Third sin: Broken documentation
5. 8:05Fourth sin: Forced community
6. 8:55Fifth sin: Poor navigation
7. 10:26Sixth sin: Premature monetization
8. 11:42Seventh sin: Excessive friction
9. 12:40Eighth sin: Unmanaged SDKs
10. 14:52Summary and closing

" related talks

• 43mThe 7 Deadly Sins of DocumentationChastity Blackwell · LISA17
• 06mEffective Onboarding: From Zero to Full SpeedChris Reid · devopsdays Minneapolis 2021
• 34mDeep End Diving: Getting Up to Speed on New CodebasesAllison Hill · RailsConf 2023
• 46mThe 7 Deadly Sins of DocumentationChastity Blackwell · SREcon18 Europe/Middle East/Africa
• 28mDesigning for Success: UX Principles for Internal Developer PlatformsKirsten Schwarzer · Platform Engineering Day Europe 2024
• 39mDeveloper Experience: How to Conquer the Hearts of DevelopersElena Lape · Community Leadership Conference @ Open Source Summit North America 2022
• 38mQuit Frustrating Your New Developers - Tips From a TeacherMiki Rezentes · RailsConf 2016
• 35mDev Experience in Technical Writing: 15 Tips to Boost Developer SatisfactionMichiel Mulders · Write the Docs Berlin 2025