Inside Asana's 4-Week Engineering Onboarding: An Intern's View
For many engineers, “onboarding” conjures up memories of endless slide decks in grayscale rooms and very little real coding. At Asana, onboarding is different: your first week is all about context and collaboration, and by week two, you’re in the codebase with a mentor, learning by building. Even though the Engineering Onboarding process at Asana takes ~4 weeks to complete, it’s nothing like the soul-crushing experience you might be imagining.
Week 1 - Getting acquainted with Asana
In week one, you cover the basics — IT setup, office tour, welcome lunch 😋 — but the focus is on context. You learn how Asana itself runs on Asana, and why our design principles shape the product the way they do. Because every onboarding task lives in Asana, you’re immediately working hands-on with the tool, experiencing the same workflows millions of teams use every day. That context, paired with early team 1:1s and support from your mentor, makes it easier to see how your future contributions will fit into the bigger picture.
Week 2 - Engineering Bootcamp Starts
In week 2, the technical depth ramps up. You get paired with a bootcamp mentor who will be your point of contact throughout the two-week engineering bootcamp. Sprinkled throughout the bootcamp are live sessions shared between engineering new hires: setting up development environments, data loading, testing philosophies, and more.
Development setup is incredibly smooth - the command mac_configure sets up all the packages and software you need, and we have short z commands for many development workflows (e.g. z sand for sandbox operations, z test for testing).
Bootcamp is designed to mirror how Asana engineers actually work at scale. You’ll build out a page in React and TypeScript, but more importantly, you’ll get hands-on with Asana’s Git/Graphite workflow, our data mutation system, and component architecture. Every PR you submit is reviewed by your mentor, reinforcing our engineering rigor and helping you write quality code from day one.
Week 3 - Team-Specific Onboarding
By week three, you’re digging into documentation and code specific to your team’s domain. It can feel overwhelming at first, but because you’ve already learned the fundamentals through bootcamp, you’re ready to engage meaningfully.
This is where you start joining sprint planning, retros, and team meetings – seeing firsthand how engineering and product collaboration happen inside Asana. With mentor guidance, you move from “learning how” to understanding the why behind your team’s systems and choices.
Week 4 - Onboarding Wrap-up
By week four, you’re shipping your first real tasks! For some, projects resemble bootcamp exercises; for others, they’re something entirely new. Either way, thanks to the extensive onboarding experience, you’re equipped to focus on the work itself, not tripped up by process questions around PR workflows, testing practices, or collaboration.
Onboarding here isn’t just about ramping up; it’s about giving engineers the foundation to contribute with confidence and purpose. That’s why even though Asana’s process is the most thorough many of us have experienced, it accelerates impact rather than delaying it. By the end, it’s very clear why you’re doing the work you’re doing, giving engineers a sense of purpose and progression that can be surprisingly hard to come by.
Not to mention that you might get a nice treat for “graduating” from engineering bootcamp 😀!
Author Biography
Ana DuCristea is a Software Engineer Intern on the Domain Deployment team at Asana, working on improving authentication features for organizations using Asana and enhancing codebase maintainability in the area. She is also a big fan of the Asana Culinary Program and has a very soft cat named Fabio.
Team Shout Outs
Thank you to my bootcamp mentors, Christopher Chin and Gina Bolognesi for making the bootcamp process enjoyable and educational. Thanks as well to my team mentor, Daniela Sechen, and the rest of the Domain Deployment team for supporting my growth as an intern and trusting and supporting me with impactful tasks: Yosem Sweet, Russell Engebretson, Chris Vasiu, Kevin Quicho, Boris Bolshem, Jocelyn Ng, Shiyu Li, and Zengtian Shi. And a special shout-out to all the 2025 summer interns who went through onboarding with me!
