In every community, whether it’s a tech meetup, hobby group, or neighborhood association, there’s a critical moment that determines long-term success: how we welcome newcomers. The way we integrate new members shapes not just their experience but the future health of our entire community.

Over the past decade, I’ve had the unique opportunity to observe this process from multiple angles. During my five years at Toptal, three years was leading the bootcamp team. I personally onboarded more than 300 developers into our ecosystem. Later, at Timescale, I spent nearly a year on the engineering side helping organize cohorts of newcomers, creating spaces for them to grow and share experiences during their learning journey. Now, I split my time as Developer Advocate and Community Manager at Timescale, and I continue this work through our Slack, forum or office hours program, connecting directly with newcomers as they join the Timescaledb community.

These experiences across different organizations and roles have taught me valuable lessons about the delicate art of welcoming people into new spaces.

I trully have joyful calls and I love getting to know the people and problems. Especially in a global business I got to know people from dozens of countries and different cultures and complex business environments. Give people true attention, active listening, helping and serving as I can.

This complex, cross-cultural dance has been my best teacher - challenging me to level up not just how I communicate, but especially how I listen. Each conversation is debugging practice for my human interaction skills.

If I’d resume a single premise to test if you’d like to be in a full time in a community position, just read:

You feel naturally attracted by people problems

If this sounds like you, you probably smiled just now and felt a moment of peaceful recognition. This is your calling.

Let’s be real—new devs in your community are like junior engineers who haven’t seen your legacy codebase yet. They bring fresh perspectives and enthusiasm, but they’re also navigating an unfamiliar system. As community buddy, we need to debug these common runtime exceptions in newcomer behavior:

Newcomer Psychology

New members often experience:

• Value uncertainty: They want to prove their worth immediately, which can be motivating but might prevent them from asking for help when needed.
• Hesitation to intrude: Unfamiliar with community norms, newcomers tend to observe silently rather than actively participate. While this helps them learn social dynamics, it can lead to confusion if they don’t clarify doubts.
• Narrow focus: Overwhelmed by new information, newcomers concentrate on explicitly assigned tasks. This helps them manage their initial learning, but they might miss important context unless we’re intentional about broader knowledge sharing.

Every newcomer is unique and will exhibit different behaviors. Creating an onboarding process that acknowledges these tendencies helps humanize the experience and sets everyone up for success.

First Connections Matter

Your first one-on-one meeting with a new community member establishes the foundation for your relationship.

Start by showing you’re human too – share that time you deployed to production at 5pm on Friday or spent hours debugging only to find a missing semicolon. When you drop the “senior developer who never makes mistakes” façade, newcomers feel safe to ask questions without fear of judgment.

Consider:

• Addressing their immediate questions first to build trust
• Creating a shared document to track your conversations and next steps
• Clarifying your role and availability as their mentor
• Understanding their learning preferences to better support their integration

Remember, these check-ins aren’t mechanical exercises—they’re opportunities to help someone succeed in a new environment.

Sustainable Support

Each mentorship interaction should:

• Start with an open-ended check-in about how they’re feeling
• Address any pressing questions
• Review recent wins and challenges
• Discuss upcoming opportunities and plans
• Document key points for future reference

Don’t treat these interactions as a checklist for the newcomer to complete. Instead, use them as guideposts for meaningful conversation and connection. Sometimes you’ll focus on a single item and it will be very positive for both.

The Human Foundation of Community

Pause for a moment and reflect on communities you’ve left behind. What remains in your memory? Technical details and specific projects typically fade, but your experiences with people endure. The human connections you formed likely constitute your most vivid memories.

This insight should shape how we build communities. People join because of shared interests, but they stay because of relationships. Creating strong interpersonal bonds makes the community more resilient and creates psychological safety for innovation.

Lead by example. When you don’t know something, demonstrate how to ask questions effectively. Use public channels when appropriate to normalize help-seeking behavior. Your newcomers will learn more from watching your actions than from any documentation you provide.

Building True Empathy

Empathy forms the cornerstone of effective community mentorship. It requires us to connect with the feeling underlying someone’s experience, rather than simply acknowledging it from a distance. As Brené Brown explains in her work on empathy versus sympathy, true empathy means climbing down into the hole with someone rather than looking down at them and offering platitudes.

Practical Implementation

Creating a structured approach helps ensure consistent, quality experiences for newcomers:

Before they arrive:

• Review any available information about the newcomer
• Prepare the community for their arrival
• Block time in your schedule for proper support
• Understand expectations from all sides

First day:

• Ensure they have necessary access and information
• Set up communication channels
• Explain community norms and your role
• Make key introductions
• Check for immediate obstacles

First week:

• Solicit feedback on their experience
• Adjust support frequency based on their needs
• Reflect on your effectiveness as a mentor

Continuous Improvement

The most vibrant communities constantly evolve their approaches to welcoming newcomers. Ask for suggestions on improving your onboarding process, then implement the best ideas. This not only makes your community more effective—it demonstrates that you value input from all members, regardless of tenure.

By thoughtfully supporting new members through intentional mentorship, you create the foundation for a thriving, sustainable community where everyone can contribute their best.

Related Posts

Want to go deeper? Check these out:

• Serve Your Community - Focus on community needs over personal goals
• Authentic Tech Communities - Building genuine connections that matter
• Tropical on Rails 2025 - Real-world example of community in action
• Community is Not For Sale - Why authentic engagement can’t be bought