Onboarding

Welcome to PostHog!

Giving a new joiner a great onboarding experience is super important to us. We want new joiners to feel they’ve made the right decision to join us, and that they are excited and committed to what we’re doing as a company.

Our team is spread across the world, and so are our new joiners. In order to ensure the best possible onboarding experience, we aim for the new joiner to meet up with someone from their team in their first week. Depending on the new joiner's location, they might fly out to one of our team members, or the other way around. So the onboarding experience will look a little bit different, depending on where the new joiner is based and which team they will be joining.

Below we are lining out some general steps for each new joiner's onboarding process. The People team will copy the relevant sections of the checklist into an onboarding issue on the internal, non-public Ops & People board in GitHub, and tag all relevant people.

As always, this is a living document and it changes every now and then, so it's worth keeping an eye on this page.

Upon offer acceptance

Coua will create the contract needed, depending on who is joining. Only James and Tim are allowed to sign on behalf of the company.

US team member checklist

• Create a contract using the Google Docs templates for CIIA and Offer Letter in the Legal Docs shared drive
• If we are employing someone in a new state for the first time, check the tax filing requirements on Gusto as soon as possible, as there can be a long lead time. We use Middesk Agent to help with the registration, log in details are in the People Ops vault on 1Password.
• Hire the employee in Gusto

UK team member checklist

• Create a contract using the Google Docs template in the Legal Docs shared drive
• Email DRG with signed new start form to add to payroll
• Email Parallel to add them to our pension scheme and private healthcare if opted in

Non-US nor UK team member checklist

• Use Deel to set up as a contractor. Choose 'Create a contract' and select fixed. Follow the instructions. This contract will cover pay, notice period, confidentiality and IP assignment.
• Choose the last day of the month to make payments for ongoing work, else choose something appropriate for a short term contract
• Select a notice period of 30 days
• Select for the contractor to upload necessary compliance documents
• Select for the contractor to be potentially allocated equity in the future (if this has been agreed)
• Under 'Other Specifics' add the following as a special clause: Contractor agrees to comply with any rules, policies and procedures set out in the Company Handbook, a copy of which is available on the Client's website. To the extent that there is any conflict between the terms of this Agreement and the Company Handbook, the terms which are more favorable to the Contractor shall prevail.

Everyone

• Confirm which team this person will be in
• See if in-person onboarding is an option in Cambridge and book it (Plops team to coordinate travel)
• Introduce new joiner to onboarding buddy

One week before they join

• Send team member a link to the Handbook and a copy of this page so they can check everything has been done
• Create GSuite account for the team member
• Add team member to any relevant Google Groups
• Add the team member to CharlieHR and ask them to fill in all details, upload relevant docs (e.g. passport scan). Once they are on, manually change their profile so their holiday requests are auto-approved
• (UK only) Send the team member the HMRC new starter form, pass it on to DRG once signed for payroll
• (UK only) Send a copy of their HMRC new starter form on CharlieHR to DRG, and include their salary and if they are full or part time
• (UK only) Ask if they want to be part of our private healthcare and if they want to contribute our pensions
• (UK only) Email Parallel to add them to our pension scheme and private healthcare if opted in
• (US only) Hire the team member in Gusto
• Add team member to 1Password
• Send team member a digital company credit card (Brex or Revolut)
• Check to see if a laptop is available at the hacker house (ship if outside of the UK or Europe), or have team member purchase laptop as per the spending money guidelines
• Team member to purchase any other necessary equipment as per the spending money guidelines
• Add calendar events for probation and 6-monthly performance reviews
• Give them $100 credit to spend on PostHog merch store
• Share the Important Company Details sheet with them
• Add team member to the PostHog app
• Send them an invite to Drata to do security onboarding and their background check
• Add the team member's details to our hiring plan in Pry
• Add the team member's share options to LTSE Equity and create an account for self-management
• Add team member to the internal company Slack
• Add them to all relevant Slack channels
• Add team member to PostHog Users Slack
• Add team member to PostHog organization in GitHub
• Add team member to PostHog organization in all relevant team apps
• Add team member and onboarding buddy to their onboarding issue on Github
• Add the team member to the compensation spreadsheet so we can track pay changes appropriately
• Sponsor a hedgehog on their behalf!

On their first day

• Book Welcome/Intro session
• Book a weekly 1:1 with the team member based on location
• Send them these instructions on adding the team time off cal to their Gcal
• For the first week or so, book extra sessions as appropriate to provide extra help
• (UK only) Schedule a right to work check
• (US only) I-9 Check
• Team members should add themselves to the customer interviews calendar
• Identify user as team member in Orbit
• New to GitHub? Here's a primer on how we use GitHub at PostHog. It covers key concepts, managing notifications, and subscribing to channels where team communication takes place.

During their first week

The below checklist is for the new team member to complete themselves - make sure this is shared with them on their first day.

• Meet your onboarding buddy (either in person or virtually)
• Read the ‘Getting started’ and ‘How we work section’ of the Handbook carefully
• Book time with relevant team members - we encourage you to do as many of these intros as possible to get to know everyone!
• Join CharlieHR and fill in your profile (including payroll details, contact details, emergency contacts and upload a picture of your passport)
• (UK only) Upload your P45 to CharlieHR as soon as possible
• (US only) Join Gusto and fill in your payroll information
• Add the team time off calendar to your Gcal
• Add yourself to the customer interviews calendar
• Join any other tools / software you've been invited to, and flag any you think are missing
• Go through all of the security onboarding and background checks on Drata - you need to complete all of the Drata onboarding steps
• Send Lottie a picture of yourself (and make sure it's a high resolution one). Once you get a drawn version back, add yourself to the team page by adding a new Markdown file to the /contents/team folder. More guidance on this is located here.
• We also highly recommend that you join a feedback call and/or product demo in your first weeks. It provides great context on our users - ask in #ask-posthog-anything.

Onboarding buddy

Every new joiner at PostHog has an onboarding buddy. If possible, a new joiner will meet their onboarding buddy in person during their first week. In case in-person onboarding isn't an option, we will make alternative arrangements. The onboarding buddy is usually a member of the team a new joiner is joining - ideally the team lead - and they can help with any questions that pop up and with socializing during the first couple of weeks at PostHog. Of course, everyone is available to help, but it’s nice to have a dedicated person to help.

Guidance for onboarding buddies

• Once we have decided which team a new joiner will join, the People & Ops team will reach out to the team to find an onboarding buddy. Please make sure if don't have any leave booked in the week before and the two weeks after the new starter joins
• We will intro the new joiner and the onboarding buddy via email - please say hi and decide together where and when the in person onboarding will happen.

  If any travel is needed for the in-person onboarding, please check our Spending Money page and book your travel accordingly. You don't need to let us team know, just use your Brex/Revolut card.

• Please make sure you spend at least 3 days together, working through the first week onboarding list and spending time working on any role-specific tasks that are outlined in the new joiner's personal onboarding issue.
• You will remain the new joiner's main point of contact for the first few weeks, so please continue to check in with them at least once a week for the first month or so.

Additional access

Add these if appropriate for the role:

Engineering

Add team member to the 'Team' group in AWS (see [here](https://posthog.com/handbook/engineering/aws) for more info)
PagerDuty and into on-call rotation - make sure the alerts work
PagerDuty Support Hero [rotation](https://posthog.pagerduty.com/schedules#PPLGE4G). Read more about the Support Hero role [here](/handbook/engineering/support-hero)
Papercups. This includes both app access and the #customer_support channel on Users Slack
Heroku
Metabase
Add team member to Grafana, Sentry, and ask yourself if there are any other dev tools in use that the team member needs access to (then update this list)
Zendesk for customer support

Team Platform

Add team member to the [DigitalOcean](https://cloud.digitalocean.com) `PostHog` project (see [here](https://posthog.com/handbook/engineering/digitalocean) for more info)
Add team member to the [Google Cloud Platform](https://console.cloud.google.com/) `posthog` project (see [here](https://posthog.com/handbook/engineering/gcp) for more info)
Add team member to the `Team Platform` vault in 1password

People, Ops or Customer Success

Workable if they are involved in recruitment
Any relevant job boards we advertise on
Gusto, Deel and/or CharlieHR admin access if they are involved in people ops
Hubspot if they are involved in customer-facing roles (e.g. sales, user interviews) - get them to [connect their inbox](https://app.hubspot.com/crm-settings-email/6958578/email/connectedEmails)
Orbit (https://orbit.love/) for community management
Brex, Mercury, SVB, and Revolut - _keep access to a minimum here_
Zendesk for customer support

Marketing

Google Search Console
Any social media platforms we have a presence on - Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook
Mailchimp if needed (emails)
SEMRush if needed (SEO)
Shopify if needed (merch)

Product

Orbit (https://orbit.love/) for community management
Zendesk for customer support

Tools we use

We use a number of different tools to organise our work and communicate at PostHog. Below is a summary list of the most important ones - this list is not intended to be exhaustive

Everyone

• Google Suite - Gmail, Google Apps such as Docs, Sheets, Slides
• GitHub - most comms and product work
• Slack - we have an internal workspace and a users Slack as well
• Brex (US, RoW) or Revolut (UK, EU) - company cards and expenses tracking
• Shopify - powers our merch store
• Printfection - merch inventory management, YC onboarding merch, and merch drop-shipping for small events
• CharlieHR - holiday tracking, personal details
• Gusto - payroll and benefits (US)
• Deel - contractor payroll (EU and special arrangements)

Engineering

• AWS
• Pagerduty
• Heroku
• Grafana
• Sentry

Design

• Figma - our main design tool

Ops, People & CS

• HubSpot - customer CRM
• Zendesk - our support platform
• Pry - financial modelling
• LTSE Equirt - cap table management
• Fondo - US accounting
• Calendly - external meeting scheduling (e.g. demos, sales)
• Gusto - US payroll and benefits management
• Deel - international payroll and contracts management
• Workable - recruitment tool

Signatories

Charles, James and Tim at this time are the only people able to sign legal paperwork on behalf of the company.