"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

Earlier this month, I started a free mentorship program for everyone who aspires to become a developer and wants a little nudge or tips and tricks from me. The response there was tremendous.

Almost a month in, after talking one-on-one with so many developers on WhatsApp, I have a much better understanding of the current generation of aspiring developers.

#1: Web Development is popular

Going by the messages exchanged between me and 2,500 other developers, people want to learn web development. Almost 80% of people want to learn, are learning, or want to switch careers into web development.

Why is that? Well, if you look at the data, it becomes much more clear:

1. Almost every business that sells has a website.
2. Web developers are needed to create/maintain/update and change the technologies powering so many websites.
3. The web is rapidly expanding, improving, and growing. More people are getting online each day, the opportunity is tremendous for the people who control what millions of people could see through web pages.
4. The web is vast - you can pick up your little tech stack, master it, and earn through freelancing, or as an independent contractor or firm.

Does that mean you should learn web development? Well, it depends. Keep reading the article to know why.

#2: A good chunk of people are doing it wrong

I won't write "most people", but yes, a lot of people are learning competitive programming when they should really be learning web development, or music, or anything else.

A lot of the people I talked to are "stuck" learning something because their job apparently demands it. Or because they are waiting for internships or on-campus placements 100 years from now (sarcasm). Or because that's what is taught in their universities. Or because their friends are doing it.

If you fall into one of those categories you're not doing yourself a favor.

Take a step back and seriously reconsider the road you're taking. If you're not happy with the end goal and the path, if you're not excited about programming, coding, doing and learning what you do right now, it's not going to be something you'll master – you are going to give up somewhere along the way.

Don't get twisted though. This doesn't mean the usual "because-it-does-not-work" code frustration that happens all the time when you're learning. Please reconsider your field, but make sure you're doing what makes and keeps you happy. There's no shame in picking up things you like and things you don't.

#3: You want to master everything

You can't imagine all the confusion I saw.

People want to become full-stack developers, contribute to all Open Source projects, get a job at Facebook, create a rocket at NASA, leave the solar system, and set up another civilization in another galaxy all at once.

This is not how any of this works. You cannot be a full-stack or even a frontend developer in a day. And if anyone says that to you, that person is lying.

Being a full-stack developer or mastering a tech stack isn't a destination. You would never wake up one day and say that this is the day when I become a full-stack developer.

It is a journey. You'll learn so much along the journey. And the journey is going to be a long one, whether you like it or not. You also cannot effectively master everything.

Remember that my definition of mastering is not watching a 4 hour YouTube video on React and considering yourself eligible to work on the flight control dashboard on SpaceX rocket. It takes time and experience to master a tech stack, and you probably won't feel that you know everything even when you really know a lot of stuff.

Although the secret of being successful is mastering one thing, I often tell people to try out as many things as they can – just to develop a taste of what they like and what they don't. Maybe you'll like Rust, maybe someone else will like C++.

You never know until you try.

#4: You don't want to put in the work

I contacted so many people and told them to report their progress in a week. What surprised me is that most of them didn't complete the work I assigned.

"I was busy this week due to work", "I had a test coming up", "I was busy learning X" – excuses. Plain excuses.

Please realize that putting in constant effort for a sustained amount of time is one of the few things which cannot be bought or transferred with a hyperlink. You have to do it.

If you're not doing it, figure out why – is it because you don't like the thing you're doing? If that's the case, consider point #2. Is it because you don't have resources/you get confused? – ASK me! Is it because of some other reason? – TELL me!

People don't like to share things online fearing that they will be judged. Trust me, neither of us are that interesting.

When you share things, you give someone in a similar situation a chance to relate, get motivated, and even help you out.

#5: Know your tools – Ask for help

A technology you're learning might not be for you at all.

I chatted with so many Python and ML/AI enthusiasts struggling to learn backend development because they couldn't make sense of Node.js. Why would you want to learn Node for backend when you already know Python? Go and learn about Flask and Linux systems.

This is just one example of many people who didn't have guidance and mentorship early on. And I wonder how many human hours could have been saved if everyone was mentored and given a slight push to correct their trajectory.

When in doubt, ask for help. Dev forums, Google, Reddit, StackOverflow, Twitter – there are so many places to ask for help!

It would be so easy for someone to get stuck without the internet and all the smart people on it. The internet is a blessing, so use it!

Conclusion

I'm trying my best to manage the 2,500 people the in the program now, and plan to open up for mentorship again when I can take on more people.

This mentorship is part of codedamn – a platform for developers to connect and learn. If you want, you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram to keep yourself updated about the things I code and my life in general.

Let's connect!

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

Communities are usually built on shared struggles of individuals learning in a particular region, and the goals of each community differ per the individual's collective needs.

Over the years, these developer communities have grown across the world with different goals and missions but still with the general aim of providing a platform for developers to learn, interact, share ideas, support each other and grow.

"If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." – African Proverb

To better help those looking out for communities to join, I have put together a list of 20 best communities in no particular order ranging from Engineering, Design, Data Science, Machine Learning, Developer Relations, Technical Writing, and more.

If you know any more communities you have found helpful, please share them in the comments section for the benefit of all :).

1. Women Who Code

Women Who Code is an international nonprofit organization that provides a global community for women in tech with events, coding resources, jobs, mentorship, and more. They aim to inspire, support, and help women develop technical skills and excel in their careers.

Join now to get exclusive access to their community, events, scholarships, free event tickets, job boards, and more.

2. Hashnode

Hashnode is an online community where developers share knowledge and grow their careers. Developers from around the world participate in consequential discussions on Hashnode. You can write stories, ask open-ended questions as well as technical questions, ask questions anonymously, and start polls. You can also ask popular tech teams and developer influencers questions or learn from stories of awesome women in tech.

Hashnode's Devblog platform enables you to create your personal blog on your custom domain in a few simple steps with everything you need to grow as a blogger. (No Paywall, Free domain, SSL, Automatic backup of posts, Markdown, AMP Support and more). Own your canonical, make your contents independent and build your domain authority.

3. Freecodecamp

freeCodeCamp is a nonprofit organization that helps people learn to code for free through thousands of videos, articles, interactive coding lessons and thousands of freeCodeCamp study groups around the world.

You learn by completing coding challenges and building projects alongside verified certifications.

4. StackOverflow

Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for programmers with tons of questions and answers on a wide range of topics in computer programming.

You can learn from already asked and answered questions, share your programming knowledge by answering asked questions or share your issues/bugs here.

5. HackerNews

Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship, where you can submit a link to technical content.

This is a great place to promote your contents to a wide range of viewers and find amazing contents from other technical geeks.

6. Hackernoon

Hackernoon is a tech media site that delivers stories and opinions written by real tech professionals and read by Technologists, Software Developers, Bitcoiners, Blockchain Enthusiasts.

You can write technical articles here and learn from a wide range of available unfettered technical contents.

7. SitePoint Community

SitePoint community is a community for web designers and developers to discuss everything web development from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Photoshop, SEO, and more.

Similar to StackOverflow, you can ask and answer all web development questions here.

8. Kaggle

Kaggle is an online community of data scientists and machine learning practitioners with a vast repository of community published data and code with over 19,000 public datasets and 200,000 open notebooks. Kaggle also offers courses on Machine Learning, Pandas, Python, Deep Learning, Data Visualization, SQL alongside competitions, and discussions to help you grow.

9. Indie Hackers

An Indie hacker is "a person building an online project that can generate revenue." Indie Hackers is a global community of developers who are sharing their projects, strategies, and revenue statistics behind their companies and side projects.

You get to learn from the founders behind hundreds of successful online businesses and connect with others who are starting and growing their own companies through their global meetups, discussions, articles, and more.

10. Code Newbie

Code Newbie is the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. It started as a weekly Twitter chat made to provide much-needed support to people learning to code. It has since grown into a supportive, international community of people learning to code.

11. Digital Ocean Community

This is an inclusive place where developers can find or lend support and contribute to the community of DevOps and cloud computing enthusiasts. The community provides comprehensive guides, tutorials, trends for developers, Q/A sessions, and much more.

12. Product Hunt

Product Hunt is an exciting community of featured amazing products launched every day. It's a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and find out about the latest mobile applications, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.

13. Reddit

Reddit is global community of thousands sub communities, endless conversations, and authentic networking with tons of never-ending streams for developers like r/reactjs, r/vuejs, r/JAMstack_dev, r/Python and more.

14. DevCareers

DevCareer is a nonprofit organization that is focused on supporting upcoming developers with mentorship and resources to enable them to become world-class developers. They provide laptops, co-working space, resources, mentorship, and job placements for software developers in Africa who pass through the program.

15. The Interaction Design Foundation Community

The Interaction Design Foundation Community provides an exciting opportunity for designers to create and hone their portfolio while getting ready for a new User Experience job. They offer courses from UX experts, local UX Design Meet-ups in cities across the world, UX discussions, collaboration, and much more.

16. Daily UI

Daily UI is a free series of daily UI design challenges, design inspiration, and surprise rewards to make you become a better designer in 100 days. Their amazing daily reminders will motivate you to keep learning.

17. Dev.to

DEV is a community of software developers helping one another out. DEV provides a place for developers to collaborate and network while learning and sharing their knowledge.

18. DevRel Collective

DevRel Collective is a community of developer relations enthusiasts that exists to facilitate sharing information, resources, and encouragement among the DevRel community.

If you are actively involved in developer communities, advocacy, or event management, you should join this community.

19. Facebook Developer Circles

Developer Circles from Facebook is a program designed to create locally organized communities for developers. These communities educate and provide a forum for discussion and knowledge sharing around topics that are top-of-mind for developers in a particular market.

Find a local Developer Circle nearest to you here.

20. Google Developers Groups

GDG brings software developers with similar interests together to meet through meetups and hands-on workshops. The community welcomes everyone and anyone interested in tech from beginners to experienced professionals.``

Find a GDG chapter nearest to you here

Conclusion

"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." – Margaret J. Wheatley

The bond in developer communities has grown from just "technical groups" to "family groups" where everyone is passionate about sharing knowledge, giving back, and helping everyone reach higher heights.

Isn't this just amazing? Cheers to the new age where sharing knowledge and togetherness become the order of the day. ??

Mentoring has become quite a rite of passage where nowadays, you are looked upon to be a mentor, regardless of the position in your company. Most companies never state this as a prerequisite to getting a job, but it is well hidden by the all too familiar requirement of being “a team player”.

A mentor doesn’t specifically have to be someone who has a ton of experience or a strong grasp over as many fields as possible. You can become a mentor by being the developer who recently delved into a specific section of code that not everyone is aware of or by taking ownership over a certain concept.

While it may seem like mentoring is a win-win situation, where both sides benefit, the reality is quite the contrary.

_Photo by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@lazycreekimages?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" data-href="https://unsplash.com/@lazycreekimages?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" class="markup--anchor markup--figure-anchor" rel="photo-creator noopener" target="_blank">Michael Dziedzic on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" data-href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" class="markup--anchor markup--figure-anchor" rel="photo-source noopener" target="blank)

Why Mentors Are Rare

Mentoring is not a teachable trait, and it is very rarely something that can be inspired in people. You either have it or you don’t. Some people may want to become mentors or state they are, but they lack the minute details of what it means. If you do not know how to approach different people or you don’t possess the ability to pass knowledge down in a constructive manner, being a mentor is not something you should consider. For these reasons, people who other people consider as mentors are few and far apart. That is why, in part, most organizations try to distill in their workers the spirit of mentorship.

Don’t give companies too much credit though. While it may seem like companies are working to spread mentoring around to help drive workers in a professional way, there is another aspect to look at. When you have only one person which holds information about a specific feature, which is sometimes referred to as “heroes”, you are at a risk of a substantial loss of knowledge when that person leaves. With mentorship, instead of having one person who holds crucial data about the product that everyone leans on, you can spread that knowledge around. Creating a more stable foundation in case of an earthquake.

_Photo by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@jerry_318?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral">Jerry Wang on <a href="https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=medium&utmmedium=referral)

What drives people to become mentors

No one is truly altruistic, but in our day to day lives, we tend to want to help others around us. Some more than others, but the general principle is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. The same thing applies in our jobs, where we are confronted with daily opportunities to abide by that saying. Most people who see themselves as mentors, look at their fellow colleagues and see in them a past version of themselves. Meaning, they see themselves when they were less skilled and less capable and remember how they yearned for some guidance. Some of them where actually mentored by someone, lighting the fuse that ignited their will to become a mentor. But some just realize they want to be that person who helps people evolve and advance professionally. Mentors actually enjoy seeing their surrounding becoming better at what they’re doing and in part, support a healthy working environment where people aren’t only defined by their specific position. This satisfaction is a key part in why people become mentors, but it is also the Achilles heal that can bring them down.

A Perfect World

In a perfect world, mentors would be the most popular people in their group, receiving the highest salaries and getting the respect they deserve. But as far as company culture goes, it’s survival of the fittest. In today’s world, you are measured only by your proficiency and efficiency. This leads to constant power struggles where people are fighting to advance their career and level up in the company’s job ladder. Due to this and in combination with inner politics, mentors are usually the ones holding the short stick. Mentors are nurturing the people around them, but are not necessarily being taken care of professionally. Because of this, certain situations can arise where mentors are basically digging their own way out of the company. Take this scenario as an example:

Consider a team of developers, where one of them is a senior. Let’s say that the senior developer is a mentor to the other less experienced ones and over time, allows them to become more knowledgeable and proficient. At some point, they will want to advance in their careers, while the senior is glued to his/her status. Looking at things from a financial standpoint, their boss will have an option between keeping the more expensive senior developer, or promoting a developer who will cost less money and have the same level of knowledge. If you were their boss, what would you do?

_Photo by [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/@cloudvisual?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" data-href="https://unsplash.com/@cloudvisual?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" class="markup--anchor markup--figure-anchor" rel="photo-creator noopener" target="_blank">CloudVisual on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" data-href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral" class="markup--anchor markup--figure-anchor" rel="photo-source noopener" target="blank)

On A Personal Note

The reason behind writing this article comes from my fair share of moments where being a mentor to the people around me, backfired. Now you could say that I was surrounded by crummy people or that I may have done something to antagonize them, but the reality couldn’t be more opposite.

The backdrop behind this lies in the fact that I was relatively new at the company I started working at, but I had already received significant praise and responsibility others did not. This obviously shone a light on me, making others aware of my situation and infusing them with doubt about their standing in the company and their career. While not being a senior developer, I was one of the few native developers around, and I took more interest in training and building the people around me than other people did. This was not common in my workplace and increased the size of the target on my back.

In one case, I was helping a fellow colleague who got stuck on a certain issue he couldn’t fix. He called me over one morning asking for help and proceeded to tell me how he has approached almost everyone in our team and division to help him out, but they all failed to solve his issue. Let’s leave behind the fact of how he decided to make note of everyone he talked to and how I’m the last one in the pecking order. Cut to fifteen minutes later, his problem is solved, and I am investing time in explaining to him why the problem occurred and how to overcome it in the future. While I am sitting there helping him out, his team has their morning routine of discussing what they are doing. I stay and I hear how the developer mentions everyone who has tried to help him, but he decides to leave me out.

Coincidence? I think not.

Don’t forget the fact, that I am still sitting there, solving his issues. I confronted him a day later about it and he offered in return a lame excuse. He said he didn’t think about it, saying he was preoccupied in naming all the people who tried to help him out and couldn’t focus on who actually did help him. This might seem like a small incident that I’m fussing way too much about, but this person always failed to mention me when giving credit, while still giving credit to other people. If at first I thought this was a one off incident, as time progressed, there were more instances where people either failed to give me credit or took ownership of things that I did.

A year later there came an opportunity to apply for a team leader position in our group. Subsequently, I was running up against him.

Who do you think got picked?

In failing to recognize my abilities and mentioning me to superiors, he essentially blocked off my career path, while advancing his. There were numerous occasions where I had my superiors say to me that they have not seen me do something. Whether it be leading people around me or promoting soft social skills. But in truth, those stuff happened, but were not communicated upwards by the people with whom I had done so. Now, I believe the developer thought of all this and deliberately acted this way. Since he had his goals set on showing how he is progressing professionally to allow him to become the better candidate for the team leader position.

I cannot emphasize in words how much this hurts, both emotionally and spiritually. You are putting yourself out there, with the will and conviction of helping others, for reasons that are far from egotistical, but you are constantly reminded of the bad character in humans. You begin to have doubts about your co workers and how your daily interaction with them is just a facade. As much as it is horrible to undergo all of this, I haven’t given up on mentoring people. I still feel immense satisfaction from teaching people and watching them grow. You could say I’m a sucker for helping people, but I would rather have it this way, than acting like everyone else.

When asking for advice, people often try to sound like they already know everything about the subject. I am guilty of this often. My questions usually contain plenty of unnecessary words and thoughts only intended to make me look good.

Unfortunately, this form of asking for advice can easily backfire. For example, I’d like to share with you a vivid example of how I frustrated a senior engineer by trying to sound like a “know-it-all.”

My blunder

A few months ago, when I first started learning about programming, I came across React Native, a relatively new technology. I heard that React Native would let engineers bypass the existing way of coding mobile apps using Java. Proud of my React Native understanding, I asked a senior engineer at a freeCodeCamp NYC event,

Is it true that the job market is shrinking rapidly for Java engineers? After all, Java code is just an old legacy system whose entire need has been replaced with React Native!

I was wrong. My question had many assumptions that were simply incorrect. I don’t want to go into the details, but it’s enough to say that the need for Java engineers is not going away anytime soon.

My immature way of asking for insight was the direct result of too much pride and overconfidence. I had been stating my personal opinion in the hopes of making myself seem like a really smart guy who has all kinds of brilliant things to say. However, doing so made me look ignorant.

Even worse, I was clearly seeking confirmation. I gave off the impression that I would have gotten annoyed if anyone disagreed with me. It was as though I gave the senior engineer constraints of, “you must agree with me or I will start arguing with you”.

I’m sure the senior engineer felt constrained. If he told me what he really thought about React Native and Java, then he knew I would argue with him. So he was stuck. What he actually said was,

I’m not quite sure it works that way. I’m pretty sure that Java will be popular for quite some time.

Uh oh. He was disagreeing with me. I doubled down. “But React Native will rule all the new apps”, I said and continued with reason after reason. “Blah blah blah…” I must have gone on for quite a bit more.

“Maybe”, said the senior engineer, and he turned away to talk to someone else.

Turning the tables

Weeks later, I researched React Native and discovered how wrong I was.

Months later, I realized how annoying it is when someone asks you for “advice” in a way that tries to confirm their opinion. Another junior engineer tried it on me:

Isn’t using Node for server side JavaScript the best thing to do right now? Doesn’t Node’s explosive popularity mean that people are constantly turning away from old server side languages like Python and Ruby?

“I’m not quite sure it works that way,” I started to say.

“Yeah, but using JavaScript on server side will dominate all the new apps,” he said, and then he kept on giving reason after reason with such confidence.

“Maybe,” I said, cutting him off. I opened up my laptop to do some coding.

I finally realized just how annoying it is when people state their opinions in their questions. They are not seeking knowledge. Rather, they are seeking validation. Not agreeing with their opinion risks getting into an argument. It makes you want to say “maybe” and politely exit the conversation.

How to engage

Here are a few sample incorrect and correct ways of asking for someone’s thoughts on a subject. Notice that the correct versions do not contain any personal opinions.

Bad:

Since React Native is so awesome, won’t React Native destroy Java’s popularity?

Good:

Will React Native have an effect on Java’s popularity?

Bad:

I’ve been telling everyone that server-side JavaScript is the way to go! Won’t Python soon be fading away?

Good:

Is server side JavaScript’s popularity causing less people to code using Python?

In conclusion, when you’re trying to engage a senior developer (or anyone, for that matter), don’t include your own personal opinion. It will make you look like a know-it-all who is both ignorant and argumentative.

Beware, as it’s an easy mistake to make. I still mess it up often and will probably continue to do so for a long time to come.

My first year of medical school was in 2003, a time when caring for HIV/AIDS patients was difficult due to lack of antiretrovirals (ARVs). Now as every medical student knows, the excitement of getting to the clinical rotations is unparalleled… walking down the inpatient halls with a stethoscope around your neck , taking care of you ‘own’ patients are among the joys of a young medical student.

However, my dreams were crashed pretty fast — I spent more time chasing after lab results that were lost. But in typical Judy style of being at the right place at the right time, I connected with Ben Wolfe (the first developer for OpenMRS — the largest open source medical records system in the world used in over 40 countries) and the rest is history.

I could tell that Ben was wondering when the only girl in his class would drop off, but those 4 pm hands on meetings proved to be one of the most valuable investments of my time……

Fast forward — and now I have worked in health open source software for many years as a developer, implementer, and evaluator — traveling around the world and making friends whose purpose is to improve patient care in places with limited resources. Nonetheless , I am not one to command a room when I walk in — I am soft spoken, and as most Americans will be quick to remind me “Where is your accent from ?” and a woman of color.

However I am still able to connect to people doing amazing work, most of whom have let me sit on their shoulders and opened innumerable opportunities for this village girl. In summarizing how I network, I realized my strategy is the open source way — I volunteer to maintain an open source radiology imaging system at librehealth.io , and share my experience below. I hope this article helps both mentors and mentees looking to make a difference for diversity in STEM and medicine.

1. Welcome to the community

At LibreHealth, the first post we encourage our new members to write is a short blob about themselves. I check this every other day and give a thumbs up to new members or a like for a new post to send a message that someone saw their message.

Librehealth meet the community post

How can you introduce STEM to minorities? By sharing your social capital — even with simple things like retweets and tags of people who are doing amazing work if you have a big social media presence. Remember most minorities will be shy to propose themselves for award nominations — so give them a shout out for things like the RedHat open source award or the Anita Borg awards… Don’t forget to introduce yourself to someone new and break out of your social circle — especially at conferences.

2. Building a community — How I do it

The challenge of building a radiology information system (RIS) which is is not directly used by patients but by doctors is that your consumer/customer pool is small. With a personal motto of “ people before code” , I work to build a community before focusing on the developer stuff.

For you as a mentee …
Build your network before you need it

In my open source journey this means stalking people using Google — I will start by searching “radiology” + “ Congo” and keep reading on people and organizations working in these countries — connecting with them on Linkedln and Twitter and finally introducing them to our project. I have volunteered as a mentor every year for high school students working on Google Code In and for university students working on Google Summer of Code on projects within our community.

3 months ago, I noticed a tweet introducing the black in AI workshop to be held at NIPS 2017 (which turned out to be amazing). I joined the group and here is my introduction:

self introduction to black in AI group

I did not know who would respond — but this email resulted in making wonderful connections to ML scientists in the Bay area — and as a bonus, I obtained feedback for a future project that would have taken years to learn about. Remember, some connections will work and others will not — don’t sweat it.

3. Help!

There are many channels for getting help on an open source project including Slack channels or IRC:

Help options for developers

How/ Where do you start networking? Online networking is easy and lower in cost, but face to face communication is king. For example, at the open source summit organized by the Linux foundation, there is a women’s lunch event that is informal, allowing people introduce themselves and the work they do. The Linux foundation is pretty generous in providing comprehensive scholarships for attendees.

Overall for all conferences, the highest value is the
Hallway track
In other words, people you meet in the corridors and stairs and exchange and inspire each other.

4. Git commit

The idea of committing code to the world to see can be pretty terrifying, so is mentorship. Recognize and embrace the vulnerability of people around you

Git commit

5. Dev 1 -> Dev 2 -> Dev 3

Akin to the evolving developer stages for open source development , let your mentorship relationship grow. For example, while the first talk from a minority speaker maybe on diversity, the next natural step should be to give technical talks. Remember this evolution also means that your mentorship relationship will at one point come to an end and its okay.

6. Code of conduct

Codes of conduct define acceptable behaviors within a community. Seek an environment of safety in your mentorship journey, where you can get honest feedback about your work and where there is room to grow. Also recognize when its time to move on.

7. Social capital

I talk about this again since we geeks love to get free swag or be the volunteer of the month. Use the same principal for your mentors — give a shout out to them when you do something amazing. Reward the mentors in your daily work.

8. Version 1.0 release -> Version 2.0 release

Remember the relationship with your mentors is always changing. Seek to provide updates to both mentors and mentees — What conference have you recently attended? Did you read a new academic paper or book ? Or is there something new in your personal life? …

Have a roadmap, and be agile in tackling your milestones, evaluating what works and what doesn't work. Use version control to manage chaos (and conflict) and be inspired to be amazing !

I recently read an article from Babson talking on how to build your village as a mentee.

I love this idea of a personal board with the following membership (copied from Babson article):

• Chairperson: The person you turn to first; perhaps a spouse or family member
• Zen Master: Someone you can count on to keep you sane and calm
• Business Guru: A professional peer who knows your craft inside and out
• Sounding Board: Someone who is wired similarly to you, with a sensibility like your own
• Devil’s Advocate: A person with a keen ability to reveal opposing perspectives
• Lifelong Friend: Someone who knows your history and helps you stay true to your values

What are your tricks that have worked for you in mentorship (as a mentor or mentee) … ?

A mentor can give career guidance and help with learning. They can teach you how to solve problems, network, and the list goes on.

I’m lucky enough to work under and be mentored by a senior developer with 20 years of experience. This is awesome. And it’s incredible how much I’ve improved as a developer since working with him.

But, as I’ve become more proficient and have started consuming more content. I’m beginning to see that there is always more than one way to approach a problem. There are many ways, other than his way.

This got me thinking back to my previous life as a plumber. I left school and started from the bottom. I learned my craft, gained experience and became an expert at that discipline.

Moving into software development, I’m starting that whole process again — from the bottom!

I’m fortunate, because having that previous experience has helped me understand what it takes to learn and become proficient in a skill.

I know how to learn.

I have been able to identify several parallels between my old and new careers. And I’m sure these parallels will extend into pretty much any career. Because of my past experience, I have a different perspective on having a mentor.

In construction, you start out as an apprentice. You may have some foundational knowledge from college, but in general you are learning your trade from a more experienced “mentor.” This is a fantastic method of learning that has proved to work time and time again.

During an apprenticeship, you get to learn foundational skills from an experienced boss or co-worker in a hands-on position. As soon as you start working, the progress you make is unbelievable. You improve at a phenomenal rate.

However, what you are learning is one person’s “way.”

At this point in your career, you don’t have a clear concept of what’s good, bad, right or wrong. You’re not necessarily being shown the best way.

As they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat!

When I left my first job as an apprentice plumber, I moved on and started working with someone else. Someone else with a totally different approach to solving certain problems.

Better ways? Sometimes!

But different for sure. I learned a different way of thinking about a problem, a different way to approach a solution. I learned and improved.

Throughout a 10-year plumbing and heating career, I had the pleasure of working with several exceptionally skilled colleagues. I took something from each of them and blended the best bits together to find the right way for me. This enabled me to become the best plumber that I could be. You could even say that I became a better plumber than my more experienced mentors.

Its easy to believe that your way is best and there is no need to improve or explore other options. For some people this is fine. But this attitude can stop you from reaching your full potential.

Being the type of person I am, I’m always eager to learn and improve. Being “as good” as my mentor would be amazing. But my personality makes me want to be better.

But to be better I need to learn from other people too. Otherwise, I’ll just become a clone of him. I’ve still got so much to learn from him. But I’m also keen to explore other ways to learn and approach things.

This advice transcends into any career or any subject that you might be learning. Learn from as many people as you can and seek new input and improvement all the time.

An experienced and trusted adviser

Mentors come in all shapes and sizes. You don’t always need an in-person mentor, and it doesn’t always have to be a one-on-one mentor/mentee relationship.

Say, for example, you’re learning web development. Read books by different authors and follow tutorials by different instructors. Listen to different podcasts. Go to meet-ups and conferences. Anyone with more experience who shares content and knowledge is your mentor — whether they know it or not!

Always assume that there is a better way to do something. Explore different options, and find a way that suits you and your way of thinking the best.

Pick the best qualities from each source of learning.

Treat your skill set like your fantasy football dream team. Cherry pick the best people for the best positions!

Thank you for reading! :) If you enjoyed it, hit that heart ♡ button below. It will make it so more people see this story here on Medium.

I’m always happy to hear from like-minded people, so feel free to say hello on Twitter.

The “D” word

We have a diversity problem in the community, and that’s been talked about quite a lot when it comes to tangible things like gender and race. A diversity of skill — an intangible thing — is also something we talk about struggling with.

While I haven’t been a different gender or a different race, I have been someone who has been a junior Ruby on Rails developer.

When I started out as a Rails developer, I was tinkering around with the framework in my spare time, which I had a lot of because I was single and working casually at Coles and doing the odd spot of PHP/Rails freelancing.

I heard that there was a Ruby meetup happening in Adelaide and I caught the train into town and ran to the meetup because I was running very late.

When I got there, people asked what I did and I told them about Coles, PHP and Rails. They said “you don’t need to work for Coles anymore” and three people gave me their business cards and said I should apply for a job. I applied for a job at SeaLink and was accepted.

At SeaLink, I got mentored by a team of “senior” Rails developers who had a whole bunch of patience for my 19-year-old antics. I am very thankful to them for the time that they spent mentoring me, as I believe it helped provide a foundation for a career that I’ve been doing for very close to 10 years.

There are plenty of juniors at the Melbourne Ruby Meetup. I know because I help run the Hack Night where a lot of them attend also. If a junior from this meetup was to tell you that they were actively looking for a job right now, would you hire them? Probably not. There seems to be quite an aversion to hiring juniors, and the main aversion is that juniors take up valuable shipping time with mentoring time instead.

In the early days, there was a lack of available talent and so companies had to hire whoever they could find. That’s why I found it easy to get a Rails job back then. I think we have once again reached that point where there just isn’t any talent to hire.

I’ve been having a lot of discussions recently in the Ruby community about why companies seem to be shying away from hiring juniors. Instead, these companies want to hire mid-to-senior developers and do not want to have apprentices who are learning alongside those mid-to-senior developers.

Lawyers, mechanics and plenty of other professions have apprenticeships, so why don’t programmers? It’s pretty strange. I think it’s because those professions have had turnover in their companies enough to learn the lesson about training for the future. This is still a young community where most people have been doing it for less than 15 years. We need to think long term about this: who will look after our code when we’re gone?

Hiring seniors

Let’s look at why companies want to hire mid-seniors in the first place. At the companies I’ve worked at, we’ve wanted to hire a new mid-to-senior person because our workload has gotten to the point where it’s exceeding our capacity. I figure that this is the same at other companies too. Like where I’ve worked — and currently work — you’ll have people breathing down your neck asking when bugs are going to be fixed or new features are going to be developed.

To address this problem, you hire a new developer or rather: you try to hire a new developer. You want a mid-to-senior developer because they have the skills to instantly dive straight into your application with little-to-no guidance and they can start shipping code.

However: the trick is finding someone who’s available at the moment. In this current climate, it’s nearly impossible to hire a mid-to-senior Ruby developer to come work for your company. What typically happens is that developers get aggressively poached between companies.

Companies spend thousands of dollars on recruiters and lots of time posting to job boards, for often very little good return. Companies spend this money to hunt the elusive 10x Developer Rockstar Unicorns, but the Unicorns are no longer out grazing in the sunny meadows, readily available for capture. They’re already working somewhere else and the conditions of where they work are extremely good.

We, as a community, have drained the talent pool dry.

We’re out of freely available Rockstar Unicorns and so it’s time that we started to grow our own.

Companies are addicted to hiring the top 5% or 10% of developers and ignoring the rest. There is a lot of great talent in the remaining group of developers, just waiting to be mentored. If they got that mentorship, we would be able to bolster our community’s best and brightest. What if the next person your company mentored went on to become your next CTO? What if they went on to be that “10x engineer” who can help out anyone on the team with anything? I really believe companies are missing out on great talent by completely ignoring it when it is non-obvious.

Too many companies are focusing on the short-term goals of shipping code, rather than the long-term growth of their teams.

Companies hiring the best-of-the-best — the people with proven great track records — and getting them to build what is essentially CRUD applications which do, at best, a fancy version of string concatenation.

If we speak in terms of hiring piano players: you’re hiring the Chopins, Bachs, Liszts, and getting them to play Mary Had A Little Lamb.

You do not need to hire senior developers. You need to hire developers of any skill level, mentor them and grow them into the next great bunch of developers. Give these people a chance and train them on real world applications that real people are using. These could be the next great people that your company needs and you are not giving them the opportunity.

Contributing back

You might be thinking: what do we (as a company) get out of this? I think that’s backwards. The thinking should be “we have earned so much from the community, and now it’s time to give back”. If you invest in the long term health of the community, it will pay dividends. In the long run, you will have an active talent pool of developers who will be able to maintain your application. In the short term, you’ll be bolstering your team’s productivity with fresh talent.

You may think that you need to hire these best-of-the-best badasses because your application is a large unmaintainable behemoth monolith and only the badasses can understand it. That you need seniors to navigate the spaghetti that is your legacy code. That may indeed be the case. But in every monolith, there is a tiny bit of functionality that a non-senior developer can work on improving along with their skills, when that non-senior is paired with a senior developer.

It’s OK to hire non-senior developers to work on real live production code. We’ve done it at Marketplacer and we’re still in business. Your company will not go down in flames because you hire a junior.

Yes, it’s risky. Initially the cost of the employee is greater than what they provide for the company. But with the right fostering, they can grow into the best asset your company has ever had.

Julia Claven has a great graph for this:

When the junior is initially hired, their dollar value to the company is less than the output they produce. With good mentoring, they can get the other end of the graph where their value to the company outweighs their salary.

There is an initial productivity hit — that’s true — but that plateaus out within 6 months if you do it right. At the end of it, rather than having one developer, you have two developers. Even if the junior is half as productive as the senior, then it’s still a 1.5x growth in the productivity of your team.

At Marketplacer we’ve hired juniors within the last year that I would consider to be very productive members of the team,and they’re great people to work with to boot. We would’ve missed out on these people if we didn’t invest the time in hiring and mentoring them and instead focused on only hiring seniors who had existing Rails app development experience.

You might be thinking, “but what if they leave?” That’s a risk you take with any hire of any skill level. If people are leaving your company, you should be reflecting on why they’re leaving in the first place. Was it really them, or was it your company? Does your company have a culture that someone would want to leave? Is your company focused on building a culture that people want to stay in, or are they only interested in shipping code?

Finding Juniors

Where can you find those juniors to start with? Well, let’s start with Code Academies. Not any particular one — although Turing is my favorite. Code Academies solve part of this lack of mentoring problem.

Code academies get new programmers to pay thousands of dollars to learn the tricks of the trade. Sometimes, these new programmers even get a “guarantee” from the code academy that they’ll get a job at the end of the course. The code academies teach these newbies a range of programming skills. At the end of this, the newbie programmers have enough skills to know the basics of things like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Ruby and can usually find their way around a Rails app easily enough. These people are very “green” and then they’re thrust out into the community to work at companies.

Unfortunately, due to our senior hiring addiction, we’re not hiring these fresh faces. The code academies produce great talent, and we’re not picking it up. These people are left to struggle for months at a time in developing their skills before they can even get a look in at a company. I’ve spoken to many juniors in that position.

Not all of these graduates have the time to spend doing that skill development, as they often have full time jobs or other responsibilities to take care of. Thankfully, they get a lot of assistance from their code academies after they’ve graduated. Well, at least the good code academies do that.

I would love to see companies breaking their addiction to seniors and more actively hiring from these code academies. More companies need to make mentorship / apprenticeship a part of what they do. The students that graduate from code academies are eager to learn and are, in my experience, very highly motivated.

There are definitely juniors who have that same kind of eagerness-to-learn and motivation who have never been to a code academy. These people have learned by themselves and by being mentored by people in the community. I can think of at least 5, perhaps even 10, of these people who would make great hires in a company’s mentorship / apprenticeship program.

If I were in charge of hiring at Marketplacer, I would hire a motivated junior, pay them a wage well enough to live off and mentor them.

Asim Aslam (@chuhnk) had a good tweet about this too:

There’s a great book I encourage you all to read: it’s called The Talent Code. As the subtitle says “Greatness isn’t born. It’s grown.” The book covers how skills of all varieties are grown in sports, music and plenty of other areas. All the industries that are covered in the book have active mentorship and apprenticeship programs. Yet, this is not cared about in the programming community for reasons mentioned earlier: we’re still quite a young community.

I’ll let you in on the secret that’s in that book: for anyone to get better at anything, they need to practice the hell out of it. How do we expect to have seniors to hire if we’re not hiring juniors and letting them improve their skills by practicing on real world applications?

So many people are talking about mentoring and hiring juniors. Let’s start doing it.

Mentorship

Now that I’ve (hopefully) convinced you to hire a junior developer, you might be wondering what you do once you have one.

I help run the Melbourne Ruby Hack Night and it’s a judgement-free environment where anyone and everyone can bring along a Ruby project and work on it. Some people are even there for the first time learning about Ruby itself, which is great to see. These Hack Nights work because these new developers feel safe and welcome and that no question is too “dumb” to ask.

You can start mentoring at your company by fostering that Hack Night-esque environment. It should be OK to put up your hand and ask a question about anything. If the questioner is getting eye rolls, sighs, or other passive aggressive signals from someone else, then that’s not the kind of environment where a junior is going to learn.

A great way to build that kind of fostering environment is to encourage pair programming. Pairing with juniors on small tasks initially is a great way to build up their confidence. When I’ve been mentoring juniors, the number one thing that I find that they’re lacking isn’t the skill, but the confidence. They know the answer, but they aren’t sure if it’s the _right_answer. They question if they’re using the right syntax or even if they should be writing the code that particular way. When a senior pairs with a junior, they can encourage them to try out things and learn from the things that they try. If the junior gets it wrong, the senior can ensure them that it’s OK to get things wrong and to guide them back on track. Pairing is the quickest way to upskill a junior and I can highly, highly recommend it.

I paired daily with some developers when I worked at GetUp and in a few months time they were confident Rails developers who could find their way easily around that Rails application. I’ve done the same at other companies too and each time I’ve seen great professional growth in the juniors that I’ve mentored. One of the best feelings in the world is when a junior says “Ahhh, I understand!”.

Pairing also helps reinforce your own knowledge. If you can’t explain something to someone clearly, then you do not understand it well enough yourself. Pairing is helpful to the junior because they get knowledge out of it, but it’s also helpful to the senior: they learn how to share what’s in their brain with other people in a clearer fashion.

What should you pair with your junior on? Well, Lydia Guarino has some good tweets about that.

I agree with both of these. Juniors thrive best when they’re given quick wins. You want that nice tight feedback loop to keep their confidence growing. Every time they “win” at code, their confidence gets that little bit more boosted.

Once they’ve built up a bit of confidence, you can let them go solo on a task. There isn’t a set timeframe for when this happens; it’s all about how confident the junior is with their own abilities.

Let them loose on something small and make it clear that they can ask any questions about what they’re doing and that there is no wrong way of doing it. Once they’re done, get them to submit their work in a pull request — you might have to teach them what one is first — and then sit together and review it.

Sitting together is important here because “why are you doing this?” written in text has no emotion, compared to it spoken with body language. Juniors may interpret a “why are you doing this?” comment as aggressive like “UGH! Why are you doing this?”.

Focusing on in-person communication helps establish a rapport between the developers much better than text-based communication ever will.

If a junior has made a mistake in the pull request then you can discuss it with them and correct the mistake. This way, that mistake will never make it to a live production environment.

Code review also allows the senior to assess how well the junior has been doing on the tasks they’ve been given. If they’re doing well on a 2-day task, then it’s probably going to be OK to give them a 4-day task too. If not, then some more mentoring may be required.

Ultimately, your mentorship should be about making the junior feel welcome and safe within your team. In fact, this should be what’s happening with everyone in your team. Google ran a project that they called “Project Aristotle”, wherein they attempted to find how to build effective teams. They interviewed hundreds of their own employees and they came up with 5 things:

The #1 item on this list is “Psychological safety”: “Team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.”

Google is not special. They’re made up of people just like your company is made up of people. You should keep this in mind when mentoring your juniors, and working with other people in your team.

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This was originally published on my blog.