So I started my new job this Monday (very grateful and lucky to land a new gig in the middle of a pandemic when everyone is losing their jobs). Ironically, between me signing the offer and my start date, the manager who hired me left the company for a "undeniable opportunity". Hence our team does not have a manager atm. New manager starts this coming Monday.

My on-boarding buddy (my point of contact for anything I need) is an iOS dev. So many things I ask him he says he has no idea. I'm an Android Engineer on their Android app, and this is probably the most complex app I've worked on. They use almost every new framework and things I was planning on learning in 2020 are now a requirement all of a sudden. I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can everyday with all resources that are available to me.

Its hard to get on-boarded from home. I've been reading their documentation and that's not too clear to me. I want to be a positively contributing team player and want to get up to speed as fast as possible but without ever having met my coworkers in person, I am finding it very hard to ask for help - especially when I think it should be straightforward. On top of this the terminology they use to describe parts of the app does not help as it is confusing and counter intuitive to me since I'm looking at the app with fresh eyes.

I'm going down a rabbit hole trying to understand how everything works, been putting in way more hours than needed so I can be up to speed before the new manager thinks I should be sharing just as much responsibility as the other team members. Any advice on how to approach this situation? How should I try to minimize the amount of pressure atm and escalate the pace of my learning? Thanks so much!

Edit: THANK YOU so much everyone for your advice! I definitely see this as a great learning opportunity and am being proactive in all ways I can while being productive with the tasks I take on, I figure I’ll learn things along the way that’ll help me put together everything over time!