Pathway to being a good swaps trader

I would speak with your direct manager about this. Best way is to get in front of him or her frequently and demonstrate you have the desire and ability, which then leads to asking for more responsibility. You basically have to be borderline annoying to do that (assuming you don't mess up any of the basic stuff like booking trades). 

One of the best ways to learn is to pitch a trade idea and your manager should let you put on the trade in small size or something, then you can watch it and monitor it. Next step after that would be having your own "strat book". 

Frankly, your desk doesn't sound very pleasant.  Perhaps it correlates with bonus season right around the corner?  In any case, I think these sort of things just take time and if you stay on the grind, you will slowly see your responsibilities expand.  You should make sure the tasks you are in charge of are done on time and done correctly every time as a start.  Beyond that, I think you need to be willing and unafraid to speak up.  For example, you mentioned shadow pricing.  I'm sure by now you have access to the pricer everyone uses.  When inquiries come in, price them on your own initiative and shout out what you see.  I guarantee the trader pricing it will instinctively shout back "agree" or disagree."  If there is a small 1k dv01 trade to price, tell the desk you're looking at it and roll with it.  I think that's the best way and you will slowly learn your way around the pricer, learn how to hedge the trades you do, and build rapport with sales and the desk.  Anyway, just don't be afraid to speak up and be persistent.  Remember that the swaps market is currently in a crisis with respect to junior people, so your desk should realistically be more willing to help than they seem to be.  Otherwise, they might find themselves without an analyst and struggling to hire a new one.

This is always a pretty difficult spot.  I'd say generally, most traders are on-call during the trading day, but there are definitely lulls when nothing's happening.  Instead of approaching traders only on an ad-hoc basis, ask them 1-on-1 if they can sit down with you after the close, or in the morning, or when it's not slow.  It's a lot less jarring for the trader to know you want to talk to him if you laid the seeds down to do that ahead of time.

Now that I'm in a senior seat, I have like a dozen things I need to do or think about, and honestly, making sure that the analyst knows basic stuff I learned like 8 years ago isn't on the top of those immediate priorities.  It's not that I don't care about analyst development, but some things require more immediate attention.  As an analyst you need to take initiative yourself to be mildly annoying and demonstrate that you care.  If people are busy and it's slow, read up, learn to use the internal systems to develop a trade idea,...etc.  Any monkey can book a trade or do back office work; that's not what they pay you six figures for.  It's too easy to just do the tasks people ask you to do and then hide away because you think nobody wants to talk to you.  Those are the analysts that get shitty raps. 

They hire you because you have a high ceiling, and one day may be a great trader.  But part of that is that you need to want it.  If you don't that's fine, but you're gonna bounce in pretty short order.  

I’m sorry you’re going through this. But from personal experience - I felt the same on my desk. That the manager is too busy to focus on my learning and the rest of the team is focused on their performance instead of a newbie who may or may not stay with their team.

Every once in a while, I’d chat (over text channels) with my manager about the stuff that I worked on and stuff on my plate. If something piqued my interest, I’d tell him that I want to learn more about it and ask him if he could get me the necessary exposure. For questions, instead of asking in DMs, I used team chats so anyone who’s available and knows the answer, could help. This way, my manager was also in the loop, and knew if I’m stuck somewhere.

After a while, when I learned these things, and the new analysts came in - I got asked questions by them all the time. And it’s not possible for me too, to get back to them immediately. But having been in their shoes, I try to find some time to explain things to them. It only makes my life easier in the long run.

Not sure if this really helped you, but long story short - be persistent, show enthusiasm, your manager is supposed to help you (but pls don’t be annoying), and when the time comes, pay it back :)

Good luck