Your mentee shares their screen again. It is the service they are stuck on at work, the real one, with the company name in the file paths and a database connection string halfway down the page. Last week it was a design document marked internal. The week before, a dashboard with customer names on it. They are not being careless on purpose. They trust you, and showing you the real thing feels like the fastest way to get help.
It probably is the fastest way. It may also be putting them in a difficult position, and you with them.
Most employment contracts include a confidentiality clause, and many companies have policies about sharing code, documents and customer data with anyone outside. Personal data brings its own rules, which in many countries are strict and apply whoever you are showing it to. Your mentee may never have read any of this closely. If something went wrong, it would be their name on the screen share, not yours.
So raise it, and raise it kindly. Do not make it a lecture, and do not end the session. Something like, I want to keep helping with this, and I would rather you did not get in trouble for showing me. Can we look at it in a way that does not need the real code? Most people are relieved, because part of them already wondered.
Then teach them the skill hiding inside the problem. Ask them to rebuild the issue as a small example of their own. A few lines, made up names, no company anything, just enough to show the behaviour that confuses them. This is exactly what experienced developers do before asking for help in public, on a forum or in an issue tracker, and it is one of the most useful habits you can give someone.
Often the small example solves the problem by itself. Stripping away everything that does not matter forces them to see what does. When it does not, you now have something you can both look at freely, for as long as you like.
For questions that really are about their company, such as how their team works, a decision they disagree with or a difficult colleague, you can talk in general terms without seeing any documents at all. You rarely need the real material to help someone think.
And check your own habits while you are at it. If you have ever shown them a screen from your own job to make a point, they learned this from somewhere.
– Asael Shinder
Top comments (0)