Dev Team Job Shadow Program
Program Overview
A 2-week immersion program giving CS majors hands-on exposure to how a real software
company operates, from idea to production. Participants observe live workflows, interview
engineers, and ship one small change to production by the end.
Format: Remote, unpaid, 2 weeks, embedded with the Green Check dev team
Outcome: Participant understands how modern software gets built, maintained, and shipped —
and has one merged PR to show for it.
What Participants Will Do
Observation (passive)
-​
-​
-​
Attend all dev ceremonies: standup, sprint planning, refinement, retro, demo
Shadow architecture / design discussions
Listen in on production incidents or postmortems if they occur
Interviews (active)
-​
-​
4–6 one-on-ones across roles: IC engineer, tech lead, EM, PM, QA, DevOps
Submit written reflections after each (1 paragraph: what they learned, what surprised
them)
Hands-on
-​
-​
-​
Access to source code, repos, and tickets
Trace 1 feature end-to-end: ticket → branch → PR → review → merge → deploy
Ship one real change to production (typo fix, copy update, small bug, add automated
tests — anything merged through full process)
Two-Week Structure
Week 1: Observe & Orient
Day
Focus
1
Onboarding, NDA, tooling access (GitHub, Slack, calendar invites), intro to mentor
2
Standup + sprint planning shadow; codebase tour; pick a candidate change
3
Refinement shadow; first 1:1 (IC engineer); start exploring change
4
Architecture / design review shadow; 1:1 with tech lead
5
Retro shadow; week 1 reflection writeup; PR draft started
Week 2: Engage & Ship
Day
Focus
6
1:1 with PM; PR opened, code review begins
7
1:1 with EM or DevOps; address PR feedback
8
Demo shadow; PR merged; observe deploy pipeline
9
1:1 with QA; trace a recently-shipped feature end-to-end
10
Final reflection writeup; exit conversation with mentor; team Q&A
Expectations: Participants
-​
-​
-​
-​
-​
Confidentiality. Sign NDA day 1. No screenshots, no copying code, no external sharing.
Professionalism. Show up on time to every meeting. Camera on. Mute when not
speaking, etc.
Curiosity over output. Ask questions in 1:1s, not in standup. Take notes.
Self-direction. You're not being assigned work — you're being given access. Initiative is
the deliverable.
Communication. End-of-day Slack message to mentor: what you observed, what you're
stuck on.
Expectations: Dev Team
-​
-​
-​
-​
-​
Mentor assignment. One designated mentor per participant. ~1-2 hours/week of direct
time.
Availability for 1:1s. Each participating engineer commits to one 30-min interview slot.
Default to inclusion. Participants attend meetings unless explicitly sensitive.
PR review. Treat their PR like any other — real review, real feedback, real standards.
No make-work. Don't manufacture tasks. The goal is exposure to real work, not
contrived projects.
Access & Tooling
System
Access Level
GitHub
Read-only on relevant repos; write only to
fork/branch for their PR
NPM
Dev access
Slack
Guest in dev channels
Jira / ticket system
Dev access
Production / customer data
None
Internal docs (Notion)
Dev access
Success Metrics
-​
-​
-​
-​
100% attendance at scheduled ceremonies and 1:1s
1 PR merged to production per participant
2 written reflections submitted (mid + end)
Mentor sign-off in exit conversation