The On-Call Handoff Shadow Shift for New SREs

New SREs shadow before they own. The two-week shadow program, the weekly checkpoints, and the graduation criteria.

Week 1: silent shadow

New SRE joins every page; observes only. Does not act, does not respond.

Asks questions afterward in 1:1 with the on-call. Builds context without slowing response.

Incident debrief at end of week. What did they observe? What surprised them?

Week 2: assisted action

New SRE responds with the senior on-call as backup. Senior steps in if needed.

Real ownership; real fallback. The graduation step.

End-of-week assessment by the senior. Ready for solo? If not, extend.

Graduation criteria

Has handled at least one sev-2 incident with assistance.

Knows the runbooks for top 5 incident types in the rotation.

Senior on-call has signed off.