Development Director Shadow Program

Why do we have a Development Director Shadow Program?

As a Development Director at GitLab, Wayne got massive value out of participating in our CEO Shadow Program when he did it in July of 2020.

Since the launch of the engineering director shadow program in September of 2021, Wayne has received great feedback from the shadows from various departments that have participated (marketing, professional services, development, and customer success).

Some blogs from previous shadows:

1. My Week as a Development Director Shadow at GitLab from Jamie Strachan.
2. Observations from GitLab’s Development Director Shadow Program from Davis Bickford
3. My experience shadowing GitLab’s Director of Engineering from Olubunmi “Boomie” Odumade
4. My experience as a GitLab Hero in Developer Director Shadow Program from Siddharth Asthana
5. My experience shadowing an Engineering Director for a week - Mrunal Kapade
6. What I Learned as a Development Director - @fjdiaz
7. The engineering director shadow experience at GitLab - @warias
8. Exciting Experience at GitLab Shadow Program - Palwasha Malik
9. Reflections from shadowing GitLab’s Development Director - Anshuman Singh
10. One week shadowing Wayne Haber, Director of Engineering at GitLab - Marc-Aurele Brothier
11. Engineering Leadership at GitLab from Sameera Perera

Benefits

For the shadow

• Mentoring
• Learning opportunities
• Career development exploration

For the engineering director

• Learning via reverse mentorship
• Feedback

Criteria to be a shadow

1. I am in the Eastern US (GMT-4) and my work hours are 8 am to 5 pm; however this varies on a day-to-day basis. The shadow must be available during some (but not all) of these hours.

For GitLab team member prospective shadows:

1. You have been with GitLab for at least one month.

For non-GitLab prospective shadows:

1. You must be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement - this is required so that we can protect confidential information.
2. You must describe why you want to participate in this program, including what you would like to learn.
3. You must complete free GitLab TeamOps training before your shadow week.

Process for requesting to be a shadow for GitLab team members

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.
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 may need to be significantly reduced for the shadow program duration.
4. After your manager approves, assign the MR to me to review and merge.

Process for requesting to be a shadow for non-GitLab team members

1. Check the schedule below for availability.
2. Fill out this form to apply.
3. Review and electronically sign the NDA that will be sent to you via Docusign.
4. Schedule time with me to discuss at least 3 business days before your preferred shadow week (link to do so will be sent by me via email).
5. After you sign the NDA and we have our discussion, you will be accepted to the program.

How does the shadowing work?

The engineering director shadow will have a chance to work alongside engineering director Wayne Haber in the following ways:

• The shadow will participate remotely.
• Attend all meetings that are public.
• Review and collaborate on public issues and merge requests.
• Keep track of time and provide warnings allowing meeting participants to wrap up the meeting before the meeting end time comfortably.
• Provide opinions during meetings with your thoughts and/or add your thoughts in the meeting notes.
• 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.
• Review the roles of those with who Wayne will be meeting in order to have more context.
• Review Wayne’s GitLab history.
• Feel free to introduce yourself in a meeting when you feel this is appropriate (especially when there are only a few attendees). Tell participants who you are, what your non-shadow role 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.
• 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.
• Remind Wayne periodically to use his standing desk.
• 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. This slack channel will not include discussions of confidential topics because it will include non-GitLab team members via adding them to slack as a “one channel participant”.

For GitLab team member shadows:

• Attend all of the scheduled meetings which are not marked as private that Wayne has accepted. You can attend 1-1s, group meetings, and much more.
• Review documents linked to the meetings.
• Take notes in the meeting documents in order to collect main points and outcomes.
• Review Slack messages I have written in public channels.
• Review Wayne’s assigned issues, assigned merge requests, and merge requests for review.

For non-GitLab shadows:

• Attend all meetings where you are invited that are not public. Wayne will invite you to non-public meetings where the topics are not confidential and the meeting attendees are ok with having a non-GitLab shadow present.
• Take notes in a Google document that is in the GitLab Google instance and is shared with the shadow so they can edit the document. This will allow the shadow and the engineering director to collaborate on these notes and for the engineering director to review the notes for information that should not be present (such as confidential information).
• Review Wayne’s public assigned issues, assigned merge requests, and merge requests for review.

Handling of confidential information

• non-GitLab shadows will not have access to confidential information.
• Some meetings will discuss confidential information. In those cases, I will ask the meeting attendees if they are ok with a GitLab team member shadow being in the meeting (and if they are ok with the shadow having read or read/write access to the meeting notes document).
• Meetings that have content that is on a need-to-know basis (such as discussions of potential acquisitions) will not include shadows.
• Only GitLab team members who are designated as insiders will be allowed access to MNPI (Material Nonpublic information) or discussions.

What this program is not

For GitLab team members, it is not a performance evaluation or a step for a future promotion. For non-GitLab team members, it is not a direct path to a job at GitLab.

Preparing for the program

1. Complete free GitLab TeamOps training before your shadow week.
2. Plan to observe and ask questions.
3. Reduce your workload by at least 75% during the shadowing time period. Don’t plan to do your normal amount of usual non-shadow work.
4. Review my readme.
5. 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.
6. Slack me in #wayne_shadow_program to let me know a couple of days before your first shadow.

For GitLab team member shadows:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. Review my calendar and plan to attend meetings that show that I have accepted them and are not private.
4. Join the slack channel #sec-growth-datascience-people-leaders.
5. Confirm you have been added to the wayne shadow program google group so you will have access to documents that may not be open to all GitLab team members (such as 1-1 meeting notes).
6. If you are not designated an insider and would like to be potentially included in discussions of MNPI, request to be added to the insider list.
7. Join and participate in the slack channel #wayne_shadow_program.

For non-GitLab team member shadows:

1. Create a GitLab account if you don’t already have one.
2. Plan to attend Zoom meetings that you get an invited to.
3. Participate in the slack channel #wayne_shadow_program.
4. Optionally, contribute changes to GitLab projects by using a personal or community fork.

Shadow onboarding

Shadow onboarding is coordinated via an issue in https://gitlab.com/wayne/wayne/-/issues/new using the director shadow onboarding issue template.

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. If you are a GitLab team member, remove yourself from the wayne shadow program google group
4. Schedule a “retrospective call” with me to discuss what you learned and provide me feedback.

Are other directors in engineering also allowing shadows?

No, not at this time.

Schedule

Shadow Alumni

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