How much time should mentors spend each week?

Plan 10–15% capacity per steward for pairing and artifact updates, plus ~2 hours/month in rituals. Make it visible in planning; otherwise it gets cannibalized by feature work.

We’re fully remote and cross‑time‑zone—does this still work?

Yes. Bias toward async artifacts (runbooks, ADRs, Looms) and rotate a weekly office hours slot across time zones. Record sessions and index them in Backstage so they’re discoverable.

What if seniors resist because it slows them down?

Set expectations in performance reviews and reward systems. Pair mentorship with high‑visibility work (risk changes, deploys) so seniors see impact. Also add `CODEOWNERS` rules that require apprentice involvement on critical paths.

We have auditors watching everything—how do we stay compliant?

Auditors love traceability. Link `Jira` tickets to runbook updates and ADRs. Record who reviewed deployments (`ArgoCD`), who acknowledged pages (`PagerDuty`), and store documents in repos with history. It strengthens your SOX/SOC posture.

How do we know it’s working?

Track ramp time to on‑call independence, MTTR contribution, reviewer coverage diversity, bus factor index, and on‑call escalation rate. Review monthly and adjust rituals and assets based on the data.

Culture · Oct 3, 2025 · 10 minute read

Mentorship That Moves Metrics: Turning Tribal Lore into On‑Call Confidence

Stop hoping seniors will “just share.” Build a mentorship system that survives PTO, audits, and incidents—and actually improves MTTR.

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Mentorship That Moves Metrics: Turning Tribal Lore into On‑Call Confidence

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist