Developer Experience
Developer Onboarding Time Calculator
Enter engineer level, days to first commit, and salary to compute onboarding cost and compare time to first commit with the calculator's role-level target.
Calculations run locally in your browserTool
Example — Representative default scenario — current days 14 · target days 9 · engineers per quarter 12.
Days to first commit
12
benchmark: 21 days for role
Direct cost
$8,307.692
new hire salary proration
Senior support cost
$2,700
25% of senior time
Total onboarding cost
$11,007.692
per hire
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About this tool
Developer Onboarding Time Calculator
The Developer Onboarding Time Calculator computes onboarding cost, productivity loss, and supporting senior overhead from time-to-first-commit and salary.
• Calculate cost of slow onboarding for an engineering efficiency report
• Benchmark time-to-first-commit against role-level targets
• Quantify ROI of improving onboarding documentation
• See how far time to first commit is from the role-level target
FAQ
What does this tool tell you?
The Developer Onboarding Time Calculator computes onboarding cost, productivity loss, and supporting senior overhead from time-to-first-commit and salary.
What affects the result most?
Time to first commit: days from start until first production contribution — key onboarding KPI. Time to full productivity: industry average 3-6 months for senior, 6-12 for junior engineers. Onboarding cost: salary × (1 - productivity_pct) × ramp_months = productivity loss during ramp.
How should I use the result?
The calculation is deterministic — the same inputs always produce the same output — so the most useful workflow is to vary one input at a time and see which factor moves the result most. That tells you where to focus your attention before committing to a decision.