What is the first thing that happens when you add a new team member to a data team? Output of the team as a whole will decrease. This is is not a bad thing on it’s own. However it may be an unexpected outcome for the person who sees the increase in costs that come with hiring extra people.
Why does this happen?
While no output is coming from the team member being onboarded, the other team members will decrease their output because they spend time getting the new team member up to speed on the way of working of the team and the ins and outs of the solution they are working on. Consequently, absolute output of the team will be decreased. This effect has been known for a long time and is nicely described in ‘The Mythical Man-Month‘.
What is the second thing that happens?
If the team has sufficiently prepared for the onboarding, you may expect a positive outcome and over time output will increase, surpassing previous levels. But this is not a given, onboarding experiences can be negative and can lead to an unexpected early departure. This is the worst possible outcome.
Now, the effort put into training up someone will have been wasted. And on top of that, you will have to again spend training hours getting someone else up to speed.