A reader asks: my onboarding buddy has gone AWOL — what now?

The question (paraphrased):

I started three weeks ago at a mid-sized tech company. My manager assigned an onboarding buddy, and for the first week and a half he was great — answered questions on Slack, walked me through a couple of systems. Then he basically vanished. Two unread Slacks, one “sorry, slammed — will get back to you tomorrow” that was four days ago. I don’t want to be that new hire who complains, but I’m stuck on two things and don’t know who to ask.

This happens to maybe 40% of new hires. Buddy programs work great until the buddy hits a busy week, a project lands, and you become the lower-priority obligation on their list. Not malice. Just gravity.

Three moves. None of them involve complaining about your buddy.

1. Stop treating one person as your only source

The first instinct when the buddy goes dark is to try harder with the buddy. More pings, more “hey sorry to bug you.” This rarely works, because the buddy is busy and now feels guilty, which makes them avoid the Slack thread instead of engaging with it. You’ve created an awkwardness loop.

Let him off the hook in your own head. Your job isn’t to fix his calendar. Your job is to find people who’ll actually answer.

In rough order of cost to other people:

• Your team’s shared channels. Most of your stuck questions have already been asked by someone before you. Search before pinging anyone. The answer is often right there in October’s threads.
• The documented onboarding guide, if there is one. Even if it’s outdated, it’s a starting point.
• Other recent hires. Anyone who joined in the 90 days before you remembers what it’s like — and they’re disproportionately willing to answer because they recently had your exact questions. Find them on the team page and Slack them directly.
• Peers in adjacent roles. If your buddy was supposed to show you how something works, the person who most needs you to know is usually your closest peer, not your assigned buddy.
• Your manager, for blocking questions only. Save manager asks for things actually blocking work — not “which Confluence page do I start with.”

Your buddy was one tile in the onboarding mosaic. The mosaic still works without him.

2. Translate “I’m stuck” into 30-second questions

If you’re stuck on two things, resist the urge to send “I’m stuck, can we chat?” That’s a costly ask. It requires a meeting. Most busy people will not schedule a meeting with a new hire on short notice — they’ll respond on the “I’ll get to it when I can” timeline, which is never.

Instead, translate each stuck question into something answerable in two lines:

• “What’s the right Confluence/Notion space for [X]?”
• “Is [Y] something we use a standard template for, or does each team do it their own way?”
• “Who owns [Z] — I’ve got a question about it but don’t want to go to the wrong person.”

Send five of these to different people. Get four answers within a day. The bad version is one big “can we hop on a call” message that sits unanswered for a week.

3. Tell your manager — about the work, not the buddy

This is the step most people get wrong. They either say nothing and drift quietly for weeks, or they say “my buddy has been unresponsive” and force the manager into a messy political situation with someone who was trying to help.

Bring up the two things you’re stuck on. Don’t bring up the person.

“Want to flag a couple of things I’m trying to get unstuck on. I’m looking for the right way to run [X] — couldn’t find a clear pattern in the docs — and I need to understand how the team handles [Y]. Any chance you could point me at who would know?”

Your manager solves it in 30 seconds by naming two people or sending two Slack intros. You didn’t complain. You didn’t make the buddy’s issue visible. You got unstuck. If the buddy pattern continues past week four, your manager will usually notice on their own — they see their team’s activity — and adjust.

Six months from now, when you’re well established, you can share the observation casually: “by the way, the buddy program was a little hit or miss for me — is there a version that works better?” That conversation, from an established employee, produces action. The same conversation from a three-week-old new hire produces eye-rolls.

The thing that feels unfair

Your buddy was assigned to help you. He’s not doing it. You should not have to do extra work to compensate.

All of that is true and none of it matters for the next ninety days. The job is to get up the ramp. The onboarding program is one of your tools, not your entitlement. If one tool is broken, you pick up others. The people who accept this early and find their own way tend to integrate faster than the people who wait for the program to work.

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The cohort that ramps fastest in any new role is the cohort that figured out by week three that onboarding is something you do TO yourself, not something done to you. Your buddy was a bonus, not the system. Build the system around him.

For the broader first-week plan that builds this kind of self-sufficiency, see the Week 1 Checklist. For the 30/60/90 version that anchors your ramp with or without a buddy, see the 30/60/90 plan.

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