Your lead has set it up. For the next five days you will sit with one of the most experienced engineers on the team and watch how they work. You are pleased, and slightly unsure what you are meant to do. Sit quietly? Take notes? Ask about everything?
Shadowing can be one of the best learning weeks you will have, or five days of watching someone type. The difference is mostly in how you approach it.
Agree on the rules on the first morning. Ask them how they would like you to ask questions. Some people are happy to be interrupted. Others would rather you collect questions and go through them at the end of each day. Either works, as long as you both know which it is.
Ask them to think out loud, especially at the moments they make a choice. Why look at the logs before the code? Why did you close that tab? The decisions are the valuable part, and they are invisible unless someone says them. Most experienced people forget that what they do automatically is not obvious.
Write down decisions, not commands. You can look up a command later. What you cannot look up is why they decided not to fix something today, or why they replied to one message straight away and left another for a week.
Pay attention to the work around the code. How they read a ticket before starting. Who they ask, and how. How they decide when they are stuck long enough to ask. That is often where the real gap between you lies.
Ask to drive for some of the week. Watching someone ride a bike teaches you less than wobbling with someone beside you. An hour on the third day where you share your screen and they watch is often worth more than the rest of the week.
Each evening, write three things you will try yourself. Not ten, just three. At the end of the week, choose the one that mattered most and keep doing it.
And thank them properly. Being watched for a week is tiring, and they gave you their time.
– Asael Shinder
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