Development Director Shadow Program

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On this page

• What is the Development Director Shadow Program?
• Benefits
  • For the shadow
  • For the engineering director
• Criteria to be a shadow
• Process for requesting to be a shadow
• How does the shadowing work?
• Process for non-shadow meeting attendees
• What this program is not
• Preparing for the program
• What to do after you participate
• Are other directors in engineering also allowing shadows?
• Schedule

What is the Development Director Shadow Program?

I got massive value out of participating in our CEO Shadow Program when I did it in July of 2020.

Since then, I have been thinking of doing something similar but smaller in scale. In July of 2021, I asked my teams if they would be interested in remotely shadowing me and several team members expressed interest as they wanted to learn what I do, how I do it, and how I make decisions.

Benefits

For the shadow

• Mentoring
• Learning opportunities
• Career development exploration

Blog on one shadow's experiences in the program: The engineering director shadow experience at GitLab

For the engineering director

• Learning via reverse mentorship
• Feedback

Criteria to be a shadow

1. I am in the Eastern US (GMT-4). The shadow must be available during some (but not all) of these working hours. Confirm this works for you before proceeding.
2. You have been with GitLab for at least one month

Process for requesting to be a shadow

1. Check the schedule below for availability.
2. Create an MR to add yourself to the table for the weeks in which you want to shadow via an MR. To get started, you can edit the page here (internal).
3. Obtain written approval from your manager that they are ok with you participating via your manager commenting in the MR that they approve, as your workload will need to be significantly reduced for the shadow program duration.
4. After your manager approves, assign the MR to me to review and merge.

How does the shadowing work?

• The shadow will participate remotely.
• You can be a shadow for as little as one week or as much as two weeks in a six-month period. The weeks do not need to be sequential.
• Join all meetings on my calendar on your shadow week that are not private (most are not private), unless I ask you not to because the meeting participants have opted out of this program for this meeting.
• If you are so inclined, review all documents, issues and merge requests linked to the meetings that you have access to.
• Review the roles of those with who Wayne will be meeting in order to have more context.
• If you don't have access to a document and the meeting participants are ok with allowing you to view it (which I will confirm), I will share my screen via Google Hangouts or grant you temporary access to the document.
• You are encouraged to take notes in meeting documents. The purpose of taking notes is to collect main points and outcomes, not to record a transcript of the conversation.
• You are encouraged to notify the participants about the remaining time 5 minutes before the end of the call during the non-group meetings.
• A meeting attendee may ask you to drop from the meeting before something confidential is covered.
• Feel free to ask me questions via Slack in #wayne_shadow_program, after a meeting concludes, via scheduling a meeting with me, or via an ad-hoc Zoom discussion.
• Review my GitLab history and Slack messages I have written in public channels.
• Shadows can choose to be aware of the current time and providing timekeeping in meetings. Doing timekeeping allows meeting participants to wrap up the meeting before the meeting end time comfortably.
• Please let Wayne know if you notice him interrupting speakers, speaking too quickly, or not pausing often enough. These are things he is working on improving.
• Feel free to introduce yourself in a meeting when you feel this is appropriate (especially when there are only a few attendees and the meeting is not public inside GitLab). Tell participants who you are, what your regular job is, and that you are a shadow in this meeting.
• Even in meetings where you are unfamiliar with the subject matter, there is an opportunity to learn, document, and shape the evolution of GitLab's values.
• If you would like, feel free to leave your video on and introduce yourself at the beginning of the meeting.
• Feel free to speak up during meetings with your thoughts and/or add your thoughts in the meeting notes.
• Wayne may ask for your input on issues, merge requests, etc.
• Wayne may ask you questions during meetings for your opinion.

Process for non-shadow meeting attendees

• If a meeting is public inside GitLab, shadows will attend the meeting as a regular participant
• Some meetings will discuss confidential information. In those cases, I will ask the meeting attendees if they are ok with a shadow being in the meeting (and if they are ok with the shadow having read or read/write access to the meeting notes document).

What this program is not

It is not a performance evaluation or a step for a future promotion.

Preparing for the program

1. Slack me in #wayne_shadow_program to let me know a couple of days before your first shadow
2. Schedule these coffee chats a couple of days before your first shadow:
   1. With me (Wayne), especially if we have not met previously
   2. With one of the previous shadows (See list below)
3. Plan to observe and ask questions
4. Reduce your workload by at least 75% during the shadowing time period. Don't plan to do your normal amount of usual work.
5. Commit to confidentiality. Participating in the shadow program is a privilege where you may be exposed to confidential information. This is underpinned by trust in the shadows to honor the confidentiality of topics being discussed and information shared. The continuation of this program is entirely dependent on shadows past, present, and future honoring this trust placed in them.
6. Review my calendar.
7. Review my readme.
8. Join the slack channel #sec-growth-modelops-people-leaders.
9. Re-read GitLab's values prior to your shadow rotation, and be mindful of new and inventive ways that CREDIT is lived out during the meetings you attend.
10. Confirm you have been added to the wayne shadow program google group so you will have access to private documents

What to do after you participate

1. After your shadow completes, I would love to hear feedback on the program, what you learned, what you liked, what you didn't like, feedback on what I can do better, etc.
2. Consider sharing your learnings with your team and other peers via a blog, slack summary, etc.
3. Remove yourself from the wayne shadow program google group

Are other directors in engineering also allowing shadows?

No, not at this time.

Schedule

A given week should be considered open for shadowing unless it is listed below.

Week of	Shadow
9/20/2021	@warias
11/15/2021	@mlindsay
12/13/2021	@mlindsay
2/21/2022	@oregand
2/28/2022	@dmishunov
3/28/2022	@rossfuhrman
4/25/2022	@sam.figueroa
7/18/2022	@bradleylee
9/12/2022	@fjdiaz