Days 1–7 — Foundations
Do not take independent technical tickets yet. Shadow, write internal notes, and fail cheaply.
Day 1–2 — How this team works
- Read How to use this handbook, Evidence, Severity.
- Sit with the help desk: Ticketing. Find severity field, internal notes, macros for HAR.
- Write one practice evidence block from a closed ticket (redact it). Compare to the template.
Check: You can recite the required evidence fields without looking.
Day 3 — Toolbelt and privacy
- Read the toolbelt overview, privacy, API clients, observability.
- Get access: help desk, error tracker (read), log search (read), read-only DB if policy allows.
- Confirm you do not have production write credentials.
Check: You know where a request id is pasted internally vs what the customer sees.
Day 4–5 — HTTP map
- Read HTTP status codes, 4xx, 5xx.
- For each of
401,403,404,429,500,502,504: write one sentence "first check." - Watch a senior classify three live tickets. Note where they used the body, not the status.
Check: You will not tell a 403 user to "log in again" as the only step.
Day 6–7 — Browser without a customer
- Read Console, Network, HAR.
- On a staging app (or any web app you own): capture a sanitized HAR of a login plus one API call. Import it back. Find the request id.
- Save Console to a file once so the muscle memory exists.
Check: You can export HAR (sanitized) from Chrome without opening a tutorial.
End of week 1 gate
Your lead signs off that you:
- Know SEV1 vs SEV3
- Have working read access
- Produced one clean evidence block
- Captured one sanitized HAR