How has virtual onboarding been?

I was onboarded virtually as a junior software engineer in April. They basically scheduled Zoom meetings with key people across the first week to help me understand their processes. After that, they assigned me my tasks and I was on my own.

It definitely feels tougher to approach someone on Slack for help. You can't tell whether someone's busy or not when deciding if you should interrupt them. You can't read facial cues. The tone of texts can easily be misinterpreted. If they miss your message and reply a few hours later/don't reply, you can't help but wonder if they dislike you. Zoom has that 40 minute time limit which makes meetings feel rushed because it's a bother to restart so I feel that people are reluctant to use it if it's not urgent.

I think this paints a picture of a toxic work environment but it definitely is not. This is just a product of a company and myself trying to adapt to unprecedented circumstances and I'm sure it will improve in the future.

I was on-boarded virtually as Lead Engineer in April. They started with WebEx meetings scheduled for a couple of days and after that I was on my own. I missed the human touch that joining a new company has. Apart from that, it was pretty smooth.