Why mentoring matters
In my career, I have spent plenty of time developing technical skills, rather than being actively involved in the life of the community. There are many reasons for that, but what is more important, eventually I realized, that developers are not just people who write code. It is a small slice of a much larger pie.
Don’t get me wrong, you do need this skill and you can’t fake it. However, you can also do other interesting things such as writing technical articles and tutorials, attending different meetups and conferences both as a visitor and a speaker. Instead of keeping your knowledge in the box of the working space, you can go and share it with peers. This is why I decided to become a mentor and write an article about it.
First of all, find a perfect balance between your job and mentoring. Start with a couple of mentees and a flexible mentoring plan. Each time you meet with a mentee, discussed what should be achieved next and when you review it. Catch up for an hour per week. This is enough time to keep up and not be overwhelmed by new responsibilities.
A mentor is usually an experienced person who shares knowledge and advice with a less experienced someone. For mentors, without a background in formal teaching, it can be difficult to understand what to expect from a mentoring program and how to collaborate with mentees.
Even if you have experience training new members of a team, mentoring is still a bit different. When you work on a particular project, you know this project very well, and it is much easier to transfer this particular knowledge to your colleagues. But with mentorship, it doesn’t work this way. A mentor and a mentee should learn new things about themselves and each other that will help them to move toward career goals. And to make it work, they need to understand the role they play and the steps they take to achieve it.
I joined one of the mentoring programs for guidance. They offered predefined steps and tools, which made the whole experience smoother for me and my first mentees.
In the beginning, I had concerns. Will mentees take our collaboration seriously? Will they work on the assignments or at least attend our meetings on time? Well, there is no such tool that can guarantee the involvement and success of some individuals. Only hard work and enthusiasm can lead to impressive results.
Another thing that was bothering me is that I am not a professional teacher. And do people even need a teacher to learn software development when there are so many good resources around? Sure, people do not always need a teacher. They can be very good at studying by themselves. They don’t need you reading them theory, or checking their homework. Often people just don’t know how to start this learning process. They have all sorts of questions: Is it really want I want to do? How much time do I need to succeed? What is more important - theory or practice? Which book from the thousands of books on the internet should I read? Or even more! Some people were asking me if I really believe that they can become developers! And I remember myself 10 years ago asking the same questions. I didn’t know how to properly evaluate my knowledge and progress. People always compare themselves with elder colleagues. And they can be shy or afraid to get bad feedback from them. But a mentor is a perfect person for these types of questions! You can be honest, you can say it as it is! I don’t like this, I don’t know that. And there is a big chance that a mentor has an instant solution for the problem.
At the same time, this mentoring is useful for the mentor! I learned how to reveal problematic areas, and how to explain complex things using simple words. While searching for studying materials I refreshed my knowledge and learn about new technologies myself. When you teach someone, you truly become a master of that subject.
Helping other people advance in their careers or do something that they wanna do and seeing them succeed is the biggest joy and reward for you.
Give it a try!
