Everyone knows it, but no one wants to say it out loud: DoD onboarding sucks.
You get through the hiring gauntlet—a process I’ve written about before—and once you make it through the interviews, paperwork, and security screenings, you show up… only to wait. You wait for access. You wait for a laptop. You wait for clarity on what you’re even supposed to be doing.
I’ve worked at the Department of Defense, Amazon, and Redfin. I’ve seen how different organizations treat the first few days, weeks, and months of a new hire’s experience. At DoD, we too often forget that onboarding isn’t just a logistical task—it’s a readiness issue. If we want people to move fast and deliver outcomes, we need to give them the tools and the trust to start doing that on Day 1.
We tried to do things differently at the Defense Digital Service (DDS). We used Macs. We used Gmail. We used Slack. The goal was to meet new hires where they were—using tools familiar to folks coming out of tech. It was a smart intent: minimize the learning curve, remove the unnecessary friction. But even with all that, I still found myself completely stuck trying to navigate militarycac.com/macnotes.htm. Anyone who’s ever tried to use a CAC with a Mac in DoD knows exactly what I’m talking about—the endless driver installs, the weird pop-ups, the arcane browser settings. It was maddening.
And while I was troubleshooting plug-ins, the clock was ticking. Like many folks at DDS, I was on a term-limited appointment. Three or four years, tops. That time wasn’t theoretical—it was real. Every day I sat waiting for something to work, or for someone to provision access, was a wasted day on a finite timeline. I felt it in my bones: this was time I’d never get back.
To make it worse, a lot of the delays weren’t even within DDS’s control. It felt like our requests were disappearing into a black box—account setups, permissions, badge appointments, VPN access. You’d submit a ticket, ping the help desk, ask a friend to escalate it, and still… silence. No status update, no timeline, no accountability. You just waited and hoped someone, somewhere, was moving the ball forward.
That kind of uncertainty kills momentum. And if you’re a term-limited hire? It can kill your impact.
Now compare that to what I saw at Amazon. There, “every day is Day 1” is more than just a slogan. It’s an operating principle. People are assumed to be capable, hungry, and ready to deliver—and the environment is built to support that from the moment they walk in. Laptop? Delivered. Credentials? Ready. Meetings and action items? Waiting on you.
“Day 1 is both a culture and an operating model that puts the customer at the center of everything Amazon does.”
- Daniel Slater, Worldwide Head, Culture of Innovation, AWS
At Redfin, I saw the same kind of intentionality. Hiring wasn’t just about closing the job offer. It was about what happened after. Onboarding was a team sport, and everyone knew their role: make the new person feel seen, supported, and set up to succeed.
Compare that to DoD, where onboarding can drag out over 6 to 12 weeks—and for term-limited folks, that’s not just inconvenient. That’s a quarter of your time on the job, lost.
To contrast even clearer, here’s a breakdown:
I get it—DoD isn’t Amazon or Redfin. We work in a world of security protocols, clearances, and systems that aren’t designed to move fast. But that doesn’t mean we’re helpless. We can still:
Issue interim CACs and unclassified access
Provide SOPs, org charts, and internal knowledge bases
Pair new hires with a mentor or onboarding buddy
Create sandbox environments or documentation projects
Invite them into meetings and conversations early
Because onboarding isn’t just paperwork. It’s culture. It’s signaling. It’s trust. It’s how we say, “We’re ready for you. You matter here.” We owe that to every person we bring in—especially the ones racing against a clock like I was. We don’t need to become Amazon or Redfin, but we do need to stop onboarding people like it’s 1999. We can fix this. We just have to care enough to start.
Because every day we delay is a day we lose impact.
And in this space, impact is everything.
