What’s a realistic TTFPR target for an established team?

Aim for 2–3 business days for a meaningful PR. If you’re at > 1 week, you’re paying onboarding tax every hiring cycle. Start by getting Day-1 setup under 2 hours and remove all tickets from the critical path.

Do we need Backstage to create Golden Paths?

No. Start with repo templates plus a devcontainer and Makefile. Backstage helps at scale, but it’s an aggregator—not a prerequisite.

Should we standardize on Codespaces for everyone?

Not necessarily. Offer it as a paved-road default for heavy stacks or contractors, but keep local dev via devcontainers working. Choice, not chaos.

How do we keep secrets safe during onboarding?

Use SSO/OIDC to avoid long-lived cloud keys. Store configuration secrets with sops + KMS and inject at runtime (Secrets Store CSI, doppler). Never send .env files over Slack or email.

What about AI-generated quickstarts—time saver or landmine?

Both. Use AI to draft scaffolds, then run a code rescue pass: add policy-as-code, linting, and security scanning. Don’t let hallucinated flags or insecure defaults leak into your templates.

Platform-productivity · Nov 27, 2025 · 10 minute read

The Onboarding Playbook That Cut Time‑to‑First‑PR from 9 Days to 2

Stop hazing your new hires with bespoke snowflakes. Ship a paved road that gets devs to their first meaningful PR this week, not next sprint.

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The Onboarding Playbook That Cut Time‑to‑First‑PR from 9 Days to 2

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist