"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?" - George Eliot

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and many people started losing their jobs, I wanted to help in any way I could. And mentoring other women trying to get into tech was one way.

I had just landed a new job after having been laid off, so my experience being a female interviewing for engineering roles was fresh.

By personally sharing this and my prior experiences, I provided these women hope while they navigated their job search, college, and new roles. My biggest realization mentoring this year was that I didn’t need to have it all figured out myself to start helping others.

I hope that by sharing the little ways I was able to help, it encourages someone to lend a helping hand. I truly believe mentoring is a small step forward towards gaining and retaining women in tech.

Why I Started Mentoring

I started mentoring in 2019, a couple of months after landing my first software engineering role, because I wanted to help others.

Getting into tech was a long journey for me and the people that helped me along the way were invaluable. I wanted to be that person for someone else.

I want to lift others up as I advance in my career. My long term goal is to build an organization that helps underrepresented women find a career they will love.

How to Start Mentoring

You don’t need years of experience to start helping someone. I started mentoring a few months after landing my first dev role.

I don’t always have the answers, but I can share my experiences, what has worked for me, and what hasn’t. It's never too early or late to start helping.

Here’s how I started mentoring and how others might to:

• I created a profile on CodingCoach.io
• A friend asked if I wanted to give career advice to someone in their network
• I answered thoughtful emails from students who had read my blog posts
• At work, I communicated with my boss that I was interested in mentoring

How I Supported My Mentees

“A mentor empowers a person to see a possible future, and believe it can be obtained.” – Shawn Hitchcock

Support came in many ways. It was easy to empathize with them because I had just finished going through the job interview process and started a new role remotely.

I supported my mentees by:

• Giving them career advice from the perspective of a female minority in tech
• Sharing tech resources (like upcoming virtual conferences, events, books, and so on)
• Offering words of encouragement
• Doing résumé reviews for them
• Doing practice mock interviews to help them prepare for actual interviews

I continue to meet with most of them biweekly for 30 minutes during my lunch breaks.

The Need to Shift Negatives to Positives

Many of my mentees had negative thoughts and feelings which seemed pretty natural given the nature of this year.

I didn’t want to let the negativity overtake my mentorship experience so I shifted the negatives to positives:

2020

How we shifted our perspectives

Here are some tips to help you turn negativity into positivity:

How Mentoring Has Been Valuable to Me

Mentoring has been valuable to me in so many ways. It has:

• Helped me understand what others who have a similar background are struggling with
• Kept me in the loop of how new engineers are being onboarded at other companies
• Reminded me where I’ve come from especially as a woman in tech
• Allowed me to give back to the tech community
• Helped me manage my time and energy
• Kept me humble

A Warm Welcome to These Resilient Women

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being. “ -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Finally, I want to share what my mentees were able to accomplish at the start of the pandemic. I hope they have been able to celebrate because we are raising a toast and are excited to have them join the world of tech.

These women were dealing with the extra uncertainty that the pandemic caused, and the constant chaos around us hasn't seemed promising.

Through their hard work and resilience they were able to land their first full time developer roles or continue their education through this tough job market and drastic life changes.

Stephanie Aurelio - (Frontend Developer) Recent Bootcamp grad

Stephanie graduated from the UCLA Extension bootcamp in March and started job searching during the pandemic.

New to the world of tech and its interview process, she asked me for some guidance on what to expect and how to possibly prepare.

She studied extremely hard, worked on side projects, and kept pushing through the interviews to land her first frontend developer role soon after graduating!

Kaya Chou - (Software Engineer) Recent Computer Science grad

Kaya graduated from undergrad this spring from Simmons University. She asked for my help to review her résumé and wanted to learn about my experience with job interviewing.

I remember one early Saturday morning when we reviewed her résumé and she was quick to update it. She even designed and built her own template and shared it with me! Kaya immediately landed her first full time software engineering role.

Maitri Shah - (Software Engineer) NerdWallet new college grad employee

Maitri started her first full time software engineer role at NerdWallet after graduating from UC Berkeley this spring. I had the pleasure of onboarding her in May.

She has been extremely adaptive, focused, and proactive. It's been exciting seeing her excel at work during her first couple of months at NerdWallet and she's already taking leadership in so many different ways.

Yesenia Galindo - Computer Science student

Yesenia recently transferred to California State University - Dominguez Hills from a community college. The transition this year of going virtual was challenging but she has been resilient and staying proactive in getting prepared for the job search once she graduates next spring.

She has been working on her personal website, keeping up with her résumé, and we have been doing mock interviews to get her familiar with the new grad interview process.

What's Next

I am so grateful to have been able to mentor these women in 2020. And I just used the extra time I gained from not having to commute to work with them.

Next year my focus will be on:

• Learning from my mentees. How has mentorship helped them? What hasn’t been working?
• Exploring ways I can expand my mentorship to a larger audience
• Mentoring a new engineer at work
• Mentoring people from different backgrounds outside of work

Let’s Continue Leading the Way

As women in tech, we still have work to do to continue building the path for future generations. Even mentoring one person can make all the difference in the world.

We’re on our way to gender equality. To see Kamala Harris become the first woman and woman of color as vice president in 2020 is something to remember and fuel us.

Just as we all have something to learn, we all have something to teach.

Let’s be friends on Twitter. Happy Coding :)

“There is strength in numbers and the numbers representing women in tech are not currently in our favor—yet. Every unique challenge brings an opportunity to do something about it. Being a woman in tech is a badge of honor. Wear it proud, loud and continue to do the hard work to help lead the way for others." Even if you're uncomfortable inciting change at your own company, there are plenty of ways to make a difference.’ - Michelle Wingard

Last October I created a Mentoring Framework at work. The goal was to create a project from scratch using Ruby on Rails. And on that journey I wanted to learn more about Ruby, front end development, Project Management and Git, Databases, and DevOps.

This Mentoring Framework is similar to what bootcamps do. The difference here is that I am sharing a list of suggested features / things to learn and each person can focus in what is important for them.

In a nutshell: Goals → Project → Execution → Knowledge (and profit).

The article is divided into 4 main sections: Before you start, Project ideas, Execution, and Examples and Resources.

Before you start

What are your main goals? For the following list, pick the level of knowledge you'd like to gain: "basic understanding", "intermediate understanding", or "advanced understanding". This will help to identify where you are going to invest more time and energy.

• Learn Ruby / Ruby on Rails
• Learn about the front end
• Learn Project Management and Git
• Learn Databases
• Learn DevOps

Project ideas

Once you know your main goals, you need a project. Check out the following two ideas:

Book store

Imagine you want to sell books online. What kind of features does a bookstore have?

• List books per title
• List books per authors
• List books per categories
• Search books
• Buy books
• List your orders

Pet adoption website

Imagine you want to create a website for an organisation that takes care of animals (in British Columbia we have the SPCA). What kind of features does a pet adoption website have?

• List pets per type (dog, cat and others)
• List pets per size (or breed, or age)
• List pets per location
• Search pet per name
• Request an adoption
• List your adoption requests

Execution

Once you know your main goals and you have an idea, it is time to work. Check the list of tasks you will be doing:

Learn Ruby on Rails

• Use scaffolds to create your entities (basic understanding) or create your own controllers, models and views (intermediate)
• Add authentication with Devise (basic understanding) or create your own (intermediate). Or use Devise with Oauth authentication (Facebook, Google, etc - intermediate)
• Add friendly URLs with a gem (basic) or create your own solution (intermediate)
• Add search (intermediate)
• Add tests for all your code
• Create seeds for your data so you don't need to manually create data
• Send emails to users (intermediate)
• Create different user roles (intermediate)
• Add pagination (basic)
• Add localization (intermediate)
• Add a tag system (intermediate)
• Add images (intermediate)

Learn about the front end

• Use Tailwind CSS (basic) or your own CSS/SASS (intermediate) to create a beautiful layout
• Use Turbolinks (advanced / optional)
• Add basic animations - for example, when adding a book in the cart show some animation (advanced/optional)
• Add Google Maps in your app (intermediate)
• Add Google Places in your users
• Add a carousel with photos
• Add Pagination with Ajax or endless pagination (advanced)

Learn Project Management and Git

• Use Github Project to organize your features
• Use feature branches in Git, create PR for all your features

Learn Databases

Write plain SQL to find relevant information. A few examples:

• Find best-sellers authors in the book store
• Find the number of orders or pet requests per city
• Find which day has more sales
• Add charts in your app to expose the data

Learn DevOps

• Deploy the website to Heroku (basic/intermediate) or AWS (advanced)
• Setup CI in Heroku (basic/intermediate)
• Add Airbrake to monitor errors in your app (basic)
• Buy a domain, set up Cloudflare (advanced/optional)

Examples

• SPCA
• Petfinder

Resources

• Courses: Ruby on Rails 5 Essential Training and Ruby on Rails 6 Essential Training - The first course is longer than the second.
• Screencasts: RubyTapas, GoRails

Also posted on my blog. If you like this content, follow me on Twitter and GitHub. Cover photo by Maxwell Nelson at Unsplash.

Hi! If you're new here, get to know a bit about me. It is important because I hold education in high regard, so I want you to make sure you're learning from the right person.

You probably have a lot of questions about this program, and how to enroll in it. I would like to answer all those questions in this article.

Who am I?

My name is Mehul Mohan, and I like to call myself a developreneur. This word has no meaning and I coined it a year back on my LinkedIn profile, as a blend of developer and entrepreneur. I like to make things using code and love the business and outreach side of it too. Hence, your developreneur :)

Anyway, I'm a full-stack developer working mostly with JavaScript and it's associated runtimes (Node/Electron/React Native). Make no mistake, I do not aim to brag, but just establish reasoning why you won't be wasting your time listening to my advice:

1. I'm the author of two books - Learn ECMAScript and Advanced Web Development with React
2. I'm a WWDC'19 scholarship winner – one of a few hundred people who attended Apple's WWDC 2019 conference in San Jòse, California for free :)
3. I've worked as a security researcher in the past, and found bugs in Google, Microsoft, eSet, Sony, Invision, etc. You can find me in Google's Hall of Fame.
4. I'm a developer YouTuber as well, running a YouTube channel called codedamn with 1100+ videos, 117K subscribers and 16 million views.
5. I have a Computer Science Engineering bachelor's degree from BITS Pilani, one of the top universities in India.

Of course, feel free to stalk me all up on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter! Send a connection/follow request too :)

Why free mentorship?

In the process of providing value to the community, I have published tons and tons of free things. But unfortunately, no matter how good the work you're doing is, the first thing you have to do is to make yourself visible to the world

I received this great piece of advice from my friend and founder of freeCodeCamp, Quincy Larson. The other day when we were on a call, he told me about the importance of putting your product in front of people first. This way they won't pick bad paid options only to realize that better (free) options exist.

This got me thinking about how I can reach out to people and have a positive impact on the developer community at the same time. A lot of future developers with a lot of potential are giving up on development every day because they don't have the guidance they need and don't know which path to follow.

I want to start small but strong, and this is where I think I should start.

What can you expect?

I consider myself a jack of all trades and master of some, at least when it comes to web applications. I can help you out with all of these things:

1. Getting into web development
2. Your career choices
3. Preparing for a job or interview for a startup or small business and teaching what goes into real-world development (not only DSA/competitive/"cracking" types of interviews)
4. Web development questions/queries
5. Containerization, Docker, and working with Linux systems
6. Open-source
7. CI/CD
8. Becoming a better developer in general
9. ...and more!

You son of a gun, I'm in

Awesome! Currently, we are running this as a WhatsApp group test. If you have WhatsApp installed on your phone, you can request to join this mentorship program by filling the following this Google form.

I hope this program is valuable to fellow developers who want to learn new skills or level up their current skillset. Let's get the ball rolling – I have so much I want to share.

Questions? Reach out to me on Twitter!

Talk to you soon!

Mehul

##

Known knowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns

It’s been almost twenty years since Donald Rumsfeld, the then US Secretary of State of Defense, said:

"There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. "

This saying is typically used to conduct risk management analysis by splitting the upcoming obstacles into 3 categories:

Known knowns — things that we know (i.e are aware of) that we know. These pose less of a risk, as they are facts we are confident in.

Known unknowns — things that we know (i.e. are aware of) that we don’t know — they imply a risk, but since we know them we can measure the risk, understand it and investigate more to make this a known known.

Unknown unknown — things we don’t know (i.e are not aware of) that we don’t know. These are probably the most dangerous since these encompass what we are not aware of and therefore can’t plan, analyze or take actions to mitigate them. You’ll have to do some thorough exploration to find the things you don’t know that don’t know.

It can get a little confusing when you put it that way, so let’s put it in a graph:

But wait… what about the unknown knowns? this is something Donald Rumsfeld didn’t discuss, but might be the most interesting.

The things you don’t know you know

The unknown knowns quadrant is often overlooked or just misinterpreted. I can easily understand why people don’t see the importance of it and just refer to it as a nonsense contradiction — how can someone not know something they already know?

Well, it turns out that your knowledge is based on many things you are not aware of — instincts, intuitions or other factors you think are trivial.

Think about your mother tongue. You can easily formulate any thought to an accurate sentence. As English is not my first language, I had to study it for years. I had to learn thousands of words to expand my vocabulary, learn the difference between a noun, a verb, an adjective and how to use them to construct a sentence. I had to learn the difference between present simple, present progressive, and past perfect. Even knowing when to use “on”, “in” or “at” is still a challenge for me. If English is your native language you might not even be aware of all these rules, you learned them when you were young and just know how to use them properly. Thus, you may also be unaware of the challenges others face when they try to speak English.

What can happen if you ignore the unknown known?

So far we’ve only tried to understand what these known unknowns are, but haven’t elaborated on why these matter at all. Ignoring the known unknowns leads to a problematic dissonance between facts (what you know) and your awareness (what you aren’t aware of). Ignoring them can be harmful and lead to situations, some of you know all too well:

“Imposter syndrome”

A few years ago I heard about imposter syndrome, and I immediately related to it. I always try to surround myself with people smarter than I am so I can learn and advance. The problem with that is that I always doubted my knowledge and felt like one day they will all expose my “secret” and realize that I’m not as good as I made my self out to be. I was terrified that one day they’ll demand to replace me with someone better. So far it didn’t happen (and I hope this post won’t give them any crazy ideas ?).

In the last couple of months, it was very hard to avoid stumbling upon an article, a talk, or a blog that didn’t mention imposter syndrome. Everybody loves talking about it, sharing their personal stories, and being proud of being a part of an exclusive group that has this syndrome. Well… guess what, almost all of us have it. Ask 20 of your friends if they ever felt like they aren’t good enough for their job or whether they ever doubted their accomplishments — I promise that almost all of them will be able to relate.

If that’s the case, is it really a syndrome? Perhaps people that always feel that they’re the best fit for the job have some “overconfidence syndrome”.

I’m sorry to burst your bubble and make you feel like you are not as “unique” as you thought. If you ask me, you are just like any other person who is unaware of what they know or appreciate the skills they have. If you’ve accomplished something or if people believe you are good at something, then you probably are. If you feel like you were just lucky or that people around you didn’t see you for the fraud that you are, then you probably have some problem in the way you perceive your skills and knowledge. This misperception means that your unknown known area is taking over the known known. You have a lot of knowns (which made you succeed) but the lack of awareness makes you feel like a fraud and is blinding your field of vision to the point that you are no longer able to see the positive qualities in you.

comprehension gaps

A few years ago I was trying to explain what I do at work to a young student- “We do a file sync & share product for SMBs. We have an out of the box SaaS, but clients can also buy S3 storage and install it on-premise”. While all that might sound trivial to people with entry-level experience in the field of cloud, this student looked at me like a deer in the headlights. To top it off, he was also too embarrassed that he barely understood a word.

Honestly, I don’t blame them because there was no way they could have know. This then got me to realize that I was ,in fact, the problem in that situation. By assuming that those terms were just common knowledge, I was ignoring my unknown knowns.

It’s important to note that unknown knowns aren’t limited to terminology. When you talk to grads or less experienced engineers (or other less experienced folks in your field), you may find that they too lack the knowledge that nowadays seems utterly “basic” to you.

Even when working with more experienced professionals, we sometimes don’t give enough context or drop enough details. In my field, I work on certain features for months at a time, adopt a particular team terminology and absorb individualized team practices. When I speak with other colleagues (especially those not in my team), I am entirely unaware of these knowns and assume that they’ll all intuitively understand how my team works.

These types of comprehension gaps often lead to misalignments because everyone tends of interpreting the implicit details differently. Being more aware of small details such as these and being more explicit about them, can reduce confusion and create better team alignment.

Feeling like you aren’t growing enough

At the start of my career, everything was new and I felt like I was learning new things every day. At some point, I started feeling like my learning curve is slowly diminishing. Eventually, it got to a point where I didn’t learn new languages or coding techniques every day because I was already familiar with the operational patterns… Turns out I was wrong about that.

In truth, I was learning a ton every single day. As a senior software engineer, I was doing more work that required “soft skills” such as communication, planning and team engagement. It was difficult to be mindful of these skills, when I only briefly thinking about what I’ve learned.

But even the “hard skills” that I’ve learned are tricky and easy to ignore: When I look back at last months I might only remember that I’ve learned GoLang, but if I dig deeper, I’ll find all those other sneaky unknown knowns which ARE the key factor in advancing my career to the next level.

It’s time to follow the yellow brick road

In the story of the Wizard Of Oz, Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, who wants a brain, the Tin Woodman, who desires a heart, and the Cowardly Lion, who needs courage. They all walk together, experience many adventures and overcome their challenges through the utilization of each others` strengths. When they get back to the Wizard of Oz, he explains to them that the attributes they sought after were within them all along. The way I see it, the journey on the yellow brick road simply cleared their blind spots and helped them see their unknown knowns.

Now it’s your turn.

How to hit your yellow brick road?

Now that you understand the importance of the unknown knowns, it’s important that you realize that this isn’t something that requires further exploration or analysis. All you need to do is give it the attention it deserves by turning the implicit knows into explicit ones. Turn to your intuition and unconscious beliefs; tap into your instincts and mold them into something you can make known to the rest of the world. By doing so, you’ll not only be able to better communicate your thoughts and knowledge to others, but also, help yourself finally raise awareness to your unknown knowns and thereby, become better at what you do.

You also understand that switching an unknown known into a known known, doesn’t require you to study anything new — all you need to do is to call it out and turning the implicit known into explicit known. Turning your intuitions, unconscious beliefs and instincts into something you can write/talk about will help you not only to communicate and share your knowledge with other, but can also help yourself be aware of the things you know and therefore be a better professional.

So what you can you do to reveal your unknown knowns?

Practical Ways of Revealing Your Unknown Knowns

_Photo by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@enka80?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Nine Köpfer on <a href="https://unsplash.com/search/photos/discover?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utmcontent=creditCopyText)

Write More

Either a blog, a draft or simply a document containing your reasoning behind a certain decision (i.e. why you preferred solution A over solution B). You’ll be surprised to learn that your seemingly simple ideas are far more profound after you write about them.

In my case, just a few days ago I thought about the unknown knowns. I didn't have more than 5 lines about this topic (actually I only wanted to tweet about it, but I didn't have twitter :) ) , but as you see it turned out to be much more than that.

Pursue Public Speaking Opportunities

Speak up and share what you’ve learned with others. Don’t assume that anything you say is trivial. The best talks I’ve heard weren’t necessary given by people who studied a subject field for 20 years, but rather, those who brought forth a fresh new perspective. Remember that it’s possible to hold a five-minute talk about any topic you desire because what may seem “easy” to you requires more context when speaking to others.

It doesn’t have to be at the biggest conference you can think of. Start with a 5 minutes talk to your team — I’m sure you have at least one thing to share with them. You’ll be amazed how many times my peers told me they won’t be able to hold a 5 talk about a topic they thought was trivial. After they’ve had the slides they asked for 10 minutes, and I was going on the safe side scheduled 15 minutes for them. It took about 20 minutes until I had to stop them ;)

Mentor Others

Helping others will provide you with the much-needed proof that you don’t give yourself enough credit. Taking on mentorships will help you realize how much you have to offer and just how beneficial your knowledge is to others. You may not have the answer to everything and that’s fine, but never underestimate the value of the little tips and tricks you picked along your yellow brick road.

When you help others, you finally understand that you don’t give yourself enough credit. You’ll be shocked with the number of things you didn’t think of and can now help others grow and learn. You might not have the answers for everything, and that’s fine, but you can surely help them with tips you’ve learned along the way. You can also help them with the way you analyze situations or the way you think when you hit an obstacle.

If by chance you don’t feel confident to become a full-on mentor, start small. Assist new hires at your workplace, or a couple of students from the local college. I can guarantee that small gestures such as these will have you reaping the fruit in no time.

Track What You Learn

Take a few minutes every week or month to write down the things what you’ve learned. Yes, even those that may initially appear trivial. Don’t put too much emphasis on the prominent accomplishments, but rather, pay more attention to the smaller ones. This can be a new shortcut you learned or a new strategy on how to write better emails. Share your list with your manager at work, or a 1x1 with your team during your weekly meetings. Everything deserves to be listed and appreciated, no matter how small.

Don’t Ignore Positive Feedback

You can learn a lot about yourself and what you are capable of from others. The best way to learn is by requesting feedback, either from your manager or your teammates. People often focus on the negative comments, but that’s not all you should pay attention to. When you receive feedback, make sure to also give space to your strengths and positive attributes . These can help you better understand your knowledge, and shed some light on the progress you’ve made. You might even learn that something that you thought you are not very good at, is perceived by others as one of your strengths, or rather your unknown knowns ;)

Express Gratitude

When someone appreciates your work or compliments you, say thank you. Don’t be too modest, don’t try to explain why it wasn’t so hard, or underestimate your accomplishments — Just thank them. If someone made the effort to recognize your achievement, they have a good reason for it.

from https://twitter.com/cszhu

Ultimately, it’s your road

You don’t have to follow each and every step listed above. Everyone’s road looks different. Pave your own path and take your own road. It’s easy to forget to follow the road you took, so from time to time try to be more conscious of your unknown knowns and turn them into known knowns.

Thanks for spending a few minutes of your time. Feel free to add me on Twitter / Linkedin, or comment bellow

-Alon

Special thanks to:

• Keren for her great work editing this post and after many iterations — turning my ideas into something readable
• Rina Artstain for proofreading, reviewing this article and giving awesome technical feedback

One of my biggest regrets while learning to program was that I isolated myself too much. I tried to do everything myself and didn’t seek out help from others. I would spend hours, sometimes days, beating my head against the keyboard trying to solve a problem that could’ve been explained to me in 10 minutes. I was too shy, oblivious, and stubborn to put in the effort to find help. The amount of time I wasted in those early days still haunts me.

It took me a while to realize that finding a mentor is an important part of the learning process. A mentor can provide crucial feedback when there normally wouldn’t be any. It puts a stress test on your skills and challenges the knowledge areas where you might be weak.

Evidence of the effectiveness of mentors can be seen throughout history. Apprenticeships used to be the primary form of education before the university system took over. Some of the world’s greatest artists and creators studied under someone else.

There are a few ways you can use mentorship to your advantage. It will require some extra effort, but I believe it’s worth it.

In this article, I will explain why mentorship is important and suggest a simple way to find one for yourself.

Feedback is the key

You can’t learn anything if you don’t get feedback. It’s as simple as that. Feedback is a fundamental requirement of the learning process. Imagine trying to improve your free-throws without seeing if your shot went in. It’d be impossible.

There are really only two main ways to receive feedback:

• You can give yourself feedback through self-study
• Someone else can provide it

The self-study method is the most common in the programming world. Usually, when we get stuck or need to learn something new, we go to websites like Stack Overflow or GitHub. The goal is to learn new information so we can reflect on our work and approach the problem from a new angle.

Self-study will always be part of a software developer’s job, because we are constantly running up against new problems. A good developer isn’t someone who has an amazing memory, but rather someone who can efficiently understand their problem and know where to find the solution.

At my first programming job, I was blown away by how fast experienced developers could find answers to my problems. It felt like they knew exactly what to search for and where to find the important information.

The flaws of self-study

Self-study is important, but there are two big problems.

Firstly, it takes time to hone your skills. Searching for relevant information is intuitive for an experienced developer, but feels more like a wild goose chase for someone who is inexperienced. It might seem simple, but it takes a lot of practice to know how to search Google or figure out the best places to look for answers.

When I first started learning programming, I either didn’t know where to look or didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. I often felt lost and overwhelmed.

Secondly, relying too heavily on self-study makes it hard for you to take a step back and understand big picture concepts. It’s easy to find yourself solving individual problems without having a good understanding of how it fits into everything else. You might learn how to do something, but not know why it’s necessary.

It’s also not always clear if you are going down the right learning path. In the beginning, it’s hard to know where to start. People do a little research and pick a path. As time goes on, the path you initially chose might not be the best route for you. You might not correct course until much later down the road. You could be wasting time learning something that doesn’t align with your long term goals.

To avoid these traps, it’s important to supplement self-study feedback with feedback from an outside source. Relying too heavily on self-study can result in wasting time on both the micro and macro level.

Why you need a mentor

There are many advantages to finding a mentor.

They help you develop a firmer understanding of the material and create a stronger foundation of skills. As you are interacting with them, they poke holes in your current understanding and stress test your abilities. They have the experience to help you understand hard concepts and will be able to point you in the right direction when you hit a roadblock.

My first job as a programmer had a great mentoring system. There was always someone to answer my questions. I learned more in my first few months on the job than I did in the previous year teaching myself.

Mentors are also great for helping you get networked in your local tech scene. Chances are they have their own network of friends and developers they can hook you into. This opens up opportunities to expand your own network, which will give you new and interesting perspectives and help you find a job when the time comes.

They also provide encouragement where there might not be any. Learning programming is hard and isolating. Mentors help you get through the tough times. A experienced developer has most likely been up against whatever roadblock you’re facing. When you get stuck or discouraged, it’s helpful to know there’s someone you can reach out to.

How to find a mentor

Finding an experienced mentor is very useful, but it’s easier said than done. There’s no yellow pages for looking up software developers who can mentor you. People going through a traditional 4-year school or a code school have the advantage of asking the teacher questions when they get stuck. Self-taught developers don’t usually have this luxury.

To find a mentor, you will need to be prepared, get out into the world, and meet people.

Meetups and user groups are a great place to start. If you live in a decently sized city, there are most likely a variety of different tech events happening each week. Just go to Meetup.com and look for an event that you find interesting.

Going to a meeting with a bunch of strangers is nerve-racking. At my first Meetup, I remember sitting in my car at the venue for 5-10 minutes before I finally gathered the courage to go inside. But, in the end I’m happy I did. The people I met at that first Meetup ended up helping me land my first software development job down the road.

It’s important that you overcome your fears so you can put yourself in a better position to succeed. At first, if you are too nervous to talk to anyone, then don’t. Sit in the corner, watch the presentation, enjoy the free pizza, and consider it a win. The next time you go to a meeting you will feel more comfortable and be ready to interact with others.

Interacting with experienced developers

Once you start interacting with people, make sure to remove your ego as much as possible. You have nothing to prove to anyone. People have a tendency to overstate their abilities when interacting with people with more skill or experience.

Overstating your abilities can be a tragic move. The point of going to the meetup in the first place is to build connections and find people who might want to help you. Acting like you know more than you do will either make you look stupid or will make people think you have it all figured out.

The key is to be vulnerable and embrace the fact that you are a newbie developer. Don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know something. Let other people know you’ve just started learning and you are open to any advice they can give.

Come prepared with questions. Ask something like, “How would you approach learning if you were in my position?” You’ll be surprised how much people will want to help you. Every developer at that meeting can sympathize with you because they were at some point in the same position as you. There are many valuable insights you can gain just from these conversations alone.

Continue the dialogue

Once you’ve met and talked to a few people, ask for their email addresses just in case you have follow-up questions.

Getting some sort of contact information is crucial. It allows you to stay in touch with the person and it opens up opportunities for future meetings.

After the meeting, reach out to the people you’ve met and ask if you can buy them a cup of coffee. It might feel like you are inconveniencing them, but people generally enjoy helping others (especially other software developers). As long as you are respectful of their time and show them you are grateful for their help, they will most likely be happy to meet with you.

I’ve always enjoyed meeting with beginner developers. It feels good imparting some of my acquired wisdom. It’s a great feeling knowing you are positively contributing to someone’s life. I made a lot of mistakes when I was first learning, and it’s nice helping other people steer away from those traps.

A word of caution before proceeding. It’s important to not abuse the relationships you build. If you email a person 5 times a day and are constantly bugging them, they will stop wanting to help you. It’s ok to ask for help, but it’s not ok to have them do the work for you.

You aren’t going to get all your specific technical questions answered through this network of people. If you do find yourself asking them technical questions, make sure they are well thought out, precise, and short. Give them the opportunity to answer you quickly. Try to avoid questions with lengthy answers unless you feel they are willing to answer them (especially in emails).

Think of an experienced developer as a compass. They won’t physically get you to your destination, but they will make sure you are going in the right direction. This will help you avoid wasting time on things that might not be helpful in your pursuit of a job. At a minimum, they will give you new things to think about and will help you self-analyze your progress.

Remember: the relationship you build is more important than the answers you receive. Answers are finite. Relationships are infinite.

Conclusion

Finding a mentor is just one way to increase your feedback. You might have other ways at your disposal. If you do, great! Use them as much as you can.

If meeting someone in the physical world is out of the question, then move digitally. Look for Facebook groups, online forums, or subreddits where you can interact with experienced developers. There are many articles written about all these different places, so I won’t go into it here.

The key is to understand that finding a mentor (or someone with more experience than you) is a very useful tool in your learning process. It could be the difference between success and failure.

They won’t find you. You will need to go out in the world and seek them out. But make sure you do.

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If you have any questions or comments feel free to comment below or reach out to me at vic.cassone@gmail.com.