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I recommend this post about practices including:HiringDocumentationMentorshipCommunicationCultureEvaluationIntegrating Remote DevelopersWhen welcoming a new developer to your team, from the codebase to code standards, team workflows to team culture, and more, there is a lot to bring them up to speed on. By adopting strong onboarding practices, not only can you avoid the type of disasters mentioned above, but you can integrate your new developer as a fully competent, productive, and satisfied team member.HiringHiring may not typically be considered onboarding, but it is the requisite step. Get the hiring wrong and your onboarding won’t matter much.Many successful hires begin with a referral — references and social proof in the form of a referral is a great way to verify the credibility of candidates. Referrals or not, you’ll want to review portfolios and past work. You can also review any open source projects they have contributed to on repositories like GitHub or SourceForge. Understanding their past work will give you a better idea of their technical skills and the types of projects they are most interested in.Don’t underestimate interest. Finding a developer who is genuinely passionate about your use-case, business model, and technology will go a long way, not only in the first few weeks on the job, but in sustaining their motivation as a productive team member for the duration of their employment with you.When bringing on a remote developer, interest and passion will be all the more important. Without an on-site manager and team members, it will be completely up to the new developer to immerse themselves in the new team and the accompanying challenges. Here at Codementor, we’ve had the opportunity to sit down with a handful of startup founders who run distributed teams. When it comes to hiring, they all emphasize the importance of passion.Zapier’s CTO, Brian Helmig, told us that when interviewing a prospective team member, he prioritizes passion and knowledge. Helmig loves to find people that are already part of the Zapier community as users and are excited to bring their expertise to the product. He goes on to say what they really look for are “autonomous doers” who don’t need a social workplace.Similarly, Hotjar CTO, David Darmanin, looks for passion and potential. For David, that means someone who has demonstrated growth in their career, is ready to expand their skill toolbox, and has a growth mindset. In other words, someone who is “hungry.” David says he’ll take hunger over experience any day:Someone who has done it all, achieved everything — I don’t want to assume — but they’re probably going to be a little less hungry than someone who is still growing and coming up in their career.Another often overlooked hiring tip is involving your current employees in the process. Depending on the size of your team, including project managers and internal employees in hiring decisions can help to build confidence, boost team spirit, and pave the way for successful formal onboarding. This type of transparency in the hiring process helps to neutralize any anxiety current employees may have regarding bringing on new talent, who can sometimes be seen as a threat. In addition, allowing team members to meet prior to onboarding helps to build the network that will be necessary to carry the new hire through onboarding and becoming a fully integrated team member.For more tips on hiring, you can read this previous post: The Ultimate Guide for Hiring Freelance Developers. If you need someone to help you find an on-site developer, Staffing Agency Alternatives to Robert Half Technology may be able to give you some leads.DocumentationDocumentation will be of paramount importance when onboarding a new developer, especially one working remotely. In our chat with Zapier’s CTO, he drove this point home saying, “information should dispense automatically by design, when it's needed.”To provide team members with the information they need to do their jobs effectively, you should document everything: from user guides of commonly used tools, organizational charts, SOPs, common bugs and how to solve them, workplace setup, software tutorials, anything that requires step-by-step instructions, organizational charts, and contact lists. To stay organized, all of this information should be available in a centralized place, like an internal wiki page. To streamline the onboarding processes, some have suggested a welcome ebook or a tutorial series. While this would require some initial investment and planning, once launched, there would be minimum upkeep and it would be of lasting utility.When it comes to developer specific documentation, you have a whole ‘nother realm to consider. Each dev team should have a standardized way to set up their local development environment and workflow procedures. Teams should choose the workflow framework most suitable for their projects and programming process — some popular workflows include GitFlow, Feature Branch Workflow, and Trunk-Based Development. As early as possible, you want to integrate your new developer into this workflow.Repository documentation should not be overlooked. This should include a wiki detailing how to use the codebase, how it’s been designed, manifestos on core principles, and any other long-form content pertinent to the project. Also include a README, which should be a quick introduction to the project.MentorshipMentorship can be an invaluable aspect of new-recruit onboarding and team building. Just because you have an efficient, knowledgeable team and a motivated newcomer doesn’t mean a mentor-mentee relationship will automatically form. Like all other aspects of new employee onboarding, mentorship needs to be thought-out and executed with care.From day one, or even before day one, new recruits should have a person to reach out to who is ready to answer any technical questions, introduce the team, and even walk them through initial projects.Don’t make the mistake of always assigning mentor duty to your most senior developer. Eventually, they are likely to get burned out and resent the additional burden AND the new team member. In fact, having a more junior developer take on the responsibility is a great way for them to put their knowledge to practice, give them leadership opportunities, and quietly check that they are up to snuff.When onboarding a new developer at Codementor, our dev team transitions new programmers into their new development workflow by quickly assigning an easy task for them to complete using GitFlow practices. This helps the new dev gain a sense of achievement and contribute to production while learning the workflow. Tasks can include rebuilding dashboards, writing a new algorithm for a matching feature, updating or building new features, or any less complex task that helps the new developer start participating as a team member. In typical production cycles, it’s not uncommon for tasks to be defined as they are being built — however, this should be avoided when assigning introductory tasks to new developers. Initial tasks should be well defined and have clear scope to avoid confusion and frustration.Here are some tips for mentors-to-be:Get started early with planning, documentation, and SOPs (like code reviews)Don’t solve their problems — help them figure it out by themselvesGive and receive feedbackHelp them learn from their mistakesDo regular pair coding exercisesEncourage independent learning with recommended reading like The Pragmatic ProgrammerCommunicationEven before work begins, you should start to include your new team member in communications: email chains, Slack channels, weekly updates, etc. There’s no need to pile everything on all at once — ease them in one channel at a time to let them get comfortable with your communication flows.Once the developer joins your team, have regularly scheduled updates. Be prepared to answer their questions and address their concerns. Weekly updates can be done stand-up style where everyone reports what they have done in the past week, what problems were encountered, what needs to be improved, and what is on deck for the next week. Ideally, your stand-up meetings should be followed up with written notes that everyone has access to.In addition to team meetings, you should use regular one-on-one meetings to check-in on new hires. One-on-one meetings are a good time for you to let your new team member know how they are doing and give any feedback or suggestions for improvement, but also for you to listen to them. Managers should encourage new engineers to give honest feedback, share what they have enjoyed, and anything they may be struggling with. Zapier has a useful meeting strategy to solicit two-way feedback we’ll call the four one’s. In sit-downs, one of the founders will ask the following questions:One thing you are worried aboutOne thing you are excited aboutOne thing I can do better to help you with your jobOne thing you can do to improveCultureHaving standardized communication structures and clear performance expectations are important to onboarding, but integrating a new developer into your company culture will add a shot of stay-power. Encouraging creativity and spontaneity with team building activities is a great way to help your new developer feel at home on your team.One way Zapier does this is with what they call pair buddies. This is a random pairing of two teammates who are matched for a 10-15 minute chat. The focus should not be on work, but rather on personal or professional sharing, so teammates can get to know each other better. Of course, the end goal is a stronger working relationship.Other distributed teams have been known to have virtual beer meetings. Everyone can grab a beverage of their choice and have an online team building session to talk about random or designated topics. It may sound strange, but it’s a way to bring online relationships to life a bit more.In addition to spontaneity, also embrace ceremonies to be held at regular intervals. Ceremonies can include demos of soon-to-ship features, buddy coding day, hack day, or whatever else you’ve got up your sleeve. Hack days are great opportunities for developers to take a break from regular sprint-based work cycles and activate their creative programming skills on problems that interest them most.If you’re interested in how hack days work, check out what Codementor’s dev team produced for our last Hack Day!Plan ceremonies so that everyone can join, including any remote team members. Ceremonies should bring a dose of consistency, an opportunity for everyone to share their talents and recent learnings, and hopefully becomes something your team looks forward to.A healthy combination of ceremony and culture building will help to promote personal relationships and team spirit — this is a vital part of helping new developers fit into your team culture. Culture and attitude fit will likely be the most important factors determining whether or not your new hire ultimately becomes a successful long-term member of your team.EvaluationTo best evaluate the performance of new developers, it’s important that they work in public. Programming related tasks can be done on platforms like Bitbucket or GitHub where everyone has access to the repository and can see what pull requests have been submitted or what changes were made. Non-coding tasks should be done in shared spaces like Google Docs, and updates made on project management tools like Asana or Trello.Evaluate not based on time spent but value produced. It is useless to be constantly looking over your developer’s shoulder. Instead, keep track of the tasks they are working on and create an environment that allows them to produce valuable results. Do this by sticking to clean code standards, code coverage expectations, and timeboxed sprints. Use a code review process to make sure new team members are meeting code standards and offer suggestions on where they can improve. Additionally, have periodic discussions on current workflow processes and address any barriers or bottlenecks.Lastly, measure by quality, not quantity. Remember, 1,000 lines of messy code will never be as good as 100 lines of clean code.Integrating Remote DevelopersTo the greatest extent possible, you should include remote developers as if they were actually on-site.All onboarding procedures can be done digitally, with the help of video chat and your run-of-the-mill virtual office tools. Though it may take a little more effort, team introductions, and mentoring can, and should, still take place with remote team members.Whether you are working with remote freelancers, part-timers, or full-time employees, becoming part of the team means learning about the company. Many companies use an introductory course, or at least have some required reading, introducing the company's history, values, mission, and long-term vision. If remote team members understand the company and its goals, they will be more likely to feel like they are part of the team. It’s important to help remote developers feel a sense of purpose within the company and camaraderie with team members. They are more likely to be motivated, loyal, work conscientiously, and have overall stronger performance.Even after remote team members are fully integrated, their goals and workflows need to continue to be aligned with the company’s initiatives and long-term goals. To do this, Hotjar annually drafts a one-page strategic document and asks that all teams and individuals align their work with the company’s North Star.ConclusionDon’t expect perfect performance the first couple of weeks a new developer is on the job. The average employee takes upwards of six months to become fully competent in their role. In this article, we have offered some tips to help you reduce this time.What we have presented here is not a rigid template to be followed, but a formula to be adjusted for your specific project and team. To optimize your own onboarding process, you can ask yourself a series of simple questions:What does my developer need before they start?What information, hardware, software, etc. do I need to provide prior to day 1?What are the biggest time consumers with new hires?What are the most frequent mistakes made by, or in connection with, new hires?If you can answer these questions and address them in your onboarding procedure, you’re on your way to successfully integrating a new team member.With the proper onboarding process, there will be no need for profanity, (unless that’s your culture), or data loss, which we’re pretty sure isn’t part of your company culture.

Cypress Vs Selenium: How To Pick The Right Testing Tool For You?Content picked from LambdaTestSelenium is one of the most prominent automation frameworks for functional testing and web app testing. Automation testers who use Selenium can run tests across different browser and platform combinations by leveraging an online Selenium Grid.Though Selenium is the go-to framework for test automation, Cypress – a relatively late entrant in the test automation game has been catching up at a breakneck pace.Like Selenium, Cypress is also an open-source test automation framework for testing web applications. And that’s where the big Cypress vs Selenium fight begins! Here are some of the most commonly asked questions that might come up when doing a Cypress vs Selenium comparison:Is Cypress an alternative to Selenium?How does Cypress fare when compared with Selenium?Like Selenium, does Cypress also support a range of popular programming languages?What is the essential architectural difference between Selenium and Cypress?Does Cypress also support cross browser testing?So many questions! In this blog, we do a detailed Cypress vs. Selenium comparison to determine the core differences between Selenium and Cypress. By the end of this blog, you should be in a better position to evaluate Cypress vs Selenium for your next test automation project!To get started with Cypress vs. Selenium, we look at what features do these frameworks offer when it comes to web automation testing:Selenium vs Cypress – A Top-Down ViewTo get started with the Cypress vs Selenium comparison, we first look at Selenium – the more established player in the web automation and cross browser testing arena.Selenium is a popular open-source test automation framework primarily used for web app testing and cross-browser testing. Selenium WebDriver is one of the pivotal components of the Selenium suite, and it lets you drive the browser natively (either on local machines or remote machines).Forks – 6KStars – 19KWatch – 1.3KSelenium supports a range of programming languages like Python, Ruby, C#, JavaScript, Java, PHP, and more. It supports several test automation frameworks, including popular BDD frameworks – Behave, JUnit, SpecFlow, MSTest, TestNG, PyTest, PyUnit, Mocha JS, Jest, WebDriverIO, Protractor, and more.To get started with Selenium test automation, developers have to download corresponding browser drivers (e.g., ChromeDriver for Chrome, geckodriver for Firefox, etc.) and the appropriate Selenium language drivers on their machines.Cypress is a relatively new player in the arena of automation testing and web app testing. Like the Selenium framework, Cypress is also open-source, and the project is hosted on GitHub. Off late, Cypress has gained significant traction, as it is evident from the number of forks and stars for the project.Forks – 1.5KStars – 24.3KWatch – 426At the time of writing this blog, the latest version of Cypress was 5.5.0. The growing interest from the developers’ community is one of the primary reasons we’re doing this Cypress vs Selenium comparison. Cypress enables you to unit tests, write end-to-end tests, as well as integration tests.Unlike Selenium WebDriver that supports many languages, Cypress only supports JavaScript. Cypress is preferred by front-end developers and automation testers who are well-versed with JavaScript. In terms of support for test automation frameworks, Cypress only supports the Mocha JS framework. Hence, the tests written for web automation testing are written in JavaScript on top of the Mocha JS framework (https://www.lambdatest.com/blog/mocha-javascript-tutorial-with-examples-for-selenium-testing/).The six-month download trend comparison of Selenium WebDriver and Cypress clearly indicates that Selenium vs Cypress battle will intensify in months to come. Cypress is catching up well with Selenium WebDriver, and this trend drives curiosity about the usefulness of these test automation frameworks.SourceNow that we have briefly discussed what Selenium WebDriver and Cypress are, let’s look at these frameworks in a more detailed manner.Introduction To SeleniumThe Selenium project was started way back in 2004, and it has come a long way since then! The Selenium IDE introduced in 2006 was a naive record and playback tool available only on Firefox. Along with Firefox, the latest Selenium IDE is also available for Chrome. It comes with cross browser support and can be used for parallel testing. It is web-ready and also lets automation testers debug scripts by setting breakpoints.The latest stable version of Selenium is Selenium 3.141.59. However, Selenium WebDriver in Selenium 4 (which is still in the Alpha Stage) is a W3C recommendation, i.e., the JSON Wire protocol would no longer be used for communicating with the web browser. The automation tests would work more seamlessly across popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and more.Selenium WebDriver ArchitectureDevelopers can expect a more stable and uniform behavior with Selenium 4 since the Selenium WebDriver and corresponding browsers use a common protocol (i.e., W3C protocol) for communication. You can refer to our detailed coverage of Selenium WebDriver architecture to know more about the Selenium framework’s essential components.Major Advantages Of SeleniumThese are some of the major positives of Selenium that can help Selenium win this Cypress vs Selenium battle:Selenium WebDriver is popularly used for unit testing, E2E (End-to-End) testing, and security testing.Selenium supports popular programming languages (e.g., Java, C#, Python, Ruby, etc.) and widely used test automation frameworks (e.g., Mocha JS, JUnit, PyUnit, TestNG, etc.)It is compatible with the latest browsers (e.g., Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc.) and outdated browsers like Internet Explorer.Since Selenium WebDriver has been around for many years, it has a growing and robust Selenium ecosystem.Test implementation for a local Selenium Grid can be ported to work with a cloud based Selenium Grid with minimal effort.The combination of Selenium and cloud-testing tools like LambdaTest can be used for parallel testing in Selenium, which eventually reduces testing time, drives cost-effectiveness, achieves better test coverage, and more.Though Selenium offers many advantages, it does have its share of shortcomings.Shortcomings Of SeleniumListed below are some of the most frequently reported shortcomings of Selenium-There is a steep learning curve for developers who are new to Selenium. The upside is that developers and automation testers can get started quickly by learning from Selenium’s active users.Setting up Selenium can be time-consuming since it involves installing the browser drivers, Selenium Grid Server, and/or Selenium IDE.Though Selenium is widely used for UI testing, it has limitations when it comes to testing images.Selenium scripts are executed outside the browser (i.e., interface between the test script and browser under test is through the corresponding ‘browser driver’). Hence, execution times can be more in comparison to the Cypress framework.Introduction To CypressCypress is a next-generation front-end testing tool built for the modern web. Cypress was built for addressing the major pain points faced by developers and QA engineers when coming up with test applications. Cypress lets you test anything that runs in a browser.With Cypress, developers can write end-to-end tests, integration tests, and unit tests. Cypress is built on JavaScript – the popular front-end language and only supports the Mocha JS framework. Chai – the popular BDD/TDD assertion library for NodeJS, is used for writing readable assertions with excellent error messages.Apart from support for programming languages, the other significant difference between Selenium and Cypress is architectural. Cypress is architecturally and fundamentally different from Selenium. We would touch upon these aspects at a later point in this Cypress vs Selenium comparison.While Selenium operates by running outside of the browser, Cypress is executed in the same loop as the application. In Cypress, there is a Node server process that communicates, synchronizes, and performs tasks on behalf of each other. As stated on the Cypress architecture page, Cypress also has access to the Network layer due to which it can read and alter web traffic on the fly.Cypress has a unique DOM manipulation technique, the basis of which Cypress tests have access to everything – web elements in the DOM, application instance, timer, service worker, and more.Cypress has access to front & back parts that enable it to modify everything coming in & out of the browser. The complete control over the automation process enables Cypress to change code that might interfere with the ability to automate the web browser. Since Cypress is installed locally on the machine, it can also access operating systems to control automation tasks.Major Advantages Of CypressTo understand whether Cypress is the right tool for you or not, let us take a look at the main advantages offered by Cypress. It will help you get a clear picture of the difference between Selenium and Cypress.Selenium requires the installation of browser drivers so that the script can interact with the web elements on the page. However, installing Cypress does not have any additional dependencies, extra downloads since the test cases run directly inside the browser.Selenium is purely a test automation tool, whereas both developers and QA engineers use Cypress. It is built on JavaScript that is widely used for front-end development.There is no additional overhead of IDE in Cypress. Once you start Cypress, it prompts you to choose any IDE that can be used for making changes in the test script.Cypress processes respond to the application’s events and processes command in real-time. With real-time reloads in Cypress, tests are reloaded automatically as and when changes are made in the app.Compared to Selenium, the Cypress framework is more capable of delivering consistent results. This is because Cypress has tighter control over the entire automation process (from top to bottom), due to which it has a better understanding of things happening in and out of the browser.In Selenium (up to v 3.8), the communication between the script and browser driver happens through the JSON Wire protocol. In Cypress, there is no necessity for JSON Wire (or some other protocol). Since Cypress operates within the application, test code can access all the objects (not limited to DOM elements) that the application code can.There is no necessity for adding implicit and explicit wait statements in Cypress since Cypress automatically waits for the element to exist in the DOM. It also waits for commands and assertions before the execution moves to the next statement. As far as stale elements are concerned, Cypress never yields stale elements that are no longer a part of the DOM.There is no network lag and flakiness in tests executed with Cypress as tests are executed inside the browser and have complete visibility of everything happening in the application synchronously. It even knows when an element is animating and waits for it to stop animating. This makes Cypress tests more flake resistant compared to tests executed with other test automation tools.Cypress takes a snapshot at every test step. This enables the developer to check the state and activity at any particular step in the test script.Cypress lets you modify the DOM elements directly, for example –showing the hidden elements to be shown.Cypress is built on top of the Electron App, enabling the developers (or QA engineers) to control the application better. For example, Stubbing DOM APIs, which are possible in Cypress, is not possible with a Selenium framework.Stubs [i.e., cy.stub()] in Cypress are used to modify functions and delegate its control over to the developer. Spies [i.e. cy.spy()] in Cypress let you Spy on a function. The clock APIs [e.g., cy.clock()] in Cypress are useful for controlling the application’s data & time. This helps in scenarios where you want to override the application’s behavior or avoid slow tests.Developers can block or prevent analytics code like Google Analytics before the application undergoes testing, as Analytics might not be required for an activity like UI testing.Creating states for a certain situation can slow down the entire test process. To overcome this problem, Cypress lets developers create states artificially like it was done in a unit test.The rich and intuitive UI of Cypress Dashboard shows you every minute detail of test execution, i.e., assertions, network requests, page loads, stubs, spies, and more.It supports parallel testing (or parallelization) by default. Along with grouping test runs, it also lets you group tests by Browsers, test labels, and more. Here is a short depiction of parallel testing with Cypress:SourceLike Selenium and other test automation frameworks, Cypress can also be integrated with popular CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Bamboo, Circle CI, Bitbucket, GitLab, and more.Shortcomings Of CypressThat was a long list of advantages offered by Cypress. Does it mean that Cypress has all it takes to win the Cypress vs Selenium competition? Not yet since it does have its fair share of shortcomings:Selenium can be used against different browsers and OS combinations, whereas Cypress is only available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, and Electron browsers. This makes Cypress a less-preferred choice for cross browser testing.It only supports the JavaScript framework for the creation of test cases.It does not support remote execution.As mentioned in the ‘Permanent Trade-Off section’ on the Cypress website, Cypress will never have support for handling multiple browser tabs. On the other hand, it is relatively easy to handle multiple browser tabs in Selenium.By default, Cypress does not support multiple-browser instances or control more than one open browser simultaneously. A workaround in Cypress is available to use two browser instances simultaneously or synchronize Cypress with other back-end processes (e.g., Selenium, Puppeteer, etc.) for driving the 2nd open browser.With Cypress, tests are limited to visiting domains that are determined to be of the same origin. By that rule, you can never visit two domains of different origins in the same test. However, it is possible to visit two or more domains that are arising from different origins in different tests.Getting Started With Selenium Cross Browser TestingSelenium is the de-facto test framework when it comes to cross browser testing. You have the option to use a local Selenium Grid or a more scalable option of testing on a cloud-based Selenium Grid like LambdaTest.To get started with cross browser testing on a local Selenium Grid, you have to install the browser drivers on the machine. Since Selenium supports languages like C#, Java, Python, Ruby, etc., you can choose the language that you are comfortable with. For performing Selenium automation on cloud Selenium Grid, you have to create an account on that platform and use the appropriate browser capabilities in the code.Here is the test scenario for demonstrating the use of Selenium and Cypress for automation testing:Navigate to the URL Sample page - lambdatest.com in Chrome 86.0 (on Windows 10)Select the first two checkboxesSend ‘Happy Testing at LambdaTest’ to the textbox with id = sampletodotextClick the Add Button and verify whether the text has been added or notAssert if the title does not match with the expected window titleRead more - Cypress Vs Selenium: How To Pick The Right Testing Tool For You?

Never glue your skill set to a framework (especially a CMS or JS Framework.) They change faster than the time required for most products to become successful and it’s very hard to get out of that box once you’ve climbed into it. A good example would be Angular 1.6 compared to Angular 2.0 in which they reinvented the wheel and no one wants to move forward to learn a complete rebuild of the framework. Wordpress breaks, constantly, and sometimes it’s caused by components you’ve installed and depend on that are no longer compatible.I taught myself VBScript (aka ASP Classic) and loved it. Looking at the corporate trends, VBScript created by Microsoft, I should have chosen PHP w/ Java or Python. I’m currently self-educating myself in PHP and Python. PHP is very much like VBScript, where you can sew the functionality into a static page and make it dynamic. Python can be, well, pretty much anything - but it’s mostly used with Django, which means that it’s now doing something for you as an MVC. MVCs, similar to a JS Framework which created SPAs (Single Page Applications), can be more trouble than they’re worth if the project doesn’t require such a concrete solution.Learn how to write Bash scripts and live in the Terminal. I was into the BBS scene, so I was online before most people were. I loved Linux, but didn’t understand the true power of Unix and became a Windows guy. Now I have a habit of disappearing for months and deep diving into everything and anything to do with Linux (mostly Ubuntu and CentOS… for now.) Create a free private repo on Bitbucket and learn Git via the terminal - I never liked SVN, should have learned more about it earlier, and appreciate Git a lot more now that I can see the difference between the two. Understand package managers from yum to apt-get to choco. Be one with the force.Bonus points: Learn Sass, which will unexpectedly teach you proper structure and some command line magic along with an introduction to Ruby and its gems.Most importantly, enjoy the ride by also paying attention to Frank M. Taylor’s answer above.