Ask HN: My 16 year old brother is job shadowing me, what should I do with him?

  • i recall doing a couple of days of work experience at a similar age, perhaps a bit younger, where i was parked in front of an old linux machine and left to learn/play with some interpreted language i'd never seen before.

    given i was only there for two days, this wasnt going to turn into some ongoing work, i think giving me some hands-on and engaging thing to do - despite it being totally independent to the project they were working on - was probably a good idea. from memory i found it pretty interesting.

  • Is it possible to include him on some sort of design / architecture meeting with your team? That might give him enough to think about and learn from while keeping him engaged.

  • why not do your job, and let him shadow you? Have some faith that he'll ask questions if he's lost.

  • When I was a teen, I visited my older sister at work one day. I ended up doing stuff like stuffing envelopes for her. After I left, the department hired some assistants to do more of that kind of thing for people in her position so they weren't doing so much admin type tasks.

    When I had a corporate job, I did an hour of job shadowing here and there for specific purposes. When in another department, I just watched as they did typical work so I could better understand what they did in a department that supported ours. In my own department, there was more explaining because I was shadowing someone faster and better than me with the express purpose of improving my speed and general process.

    At age 14, I was introduced to computers by a friend of my sister's. My sister was in college and I was visiting her. The friend was surprised at how much I was able to grasp given that I had no computer background (this was in the dark ages, when I had a yellow rotary phone and pet dinosaur).

    So I think: A) Just letting him watch is perfectly fine. B) If he asks questions or has a specific purpose, you can tailor it some at that time.