[HN Gopher] How to Mentor Software Engineers
___________________________________________________________________
How to Mentor Software Engineers
Author : brlnwest
Score : 234 points
Date : 2022-01-04 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (xdg.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (xdg.me)
| georgeoliver wrote:
| > Some people read histories, stories, case studies, and so on to
| learn from the experiences of others. Other's don't.
|
| An interesting observation, and while you could say it's less
| efficient if you're the latter type it seems there are other
| benefits.
| [deleted]
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| To indulge in a bit of naked self-interest here: a few people
| have mentioned paying for coaching or mentoring. How does that
| work, did you personally pay or did your company pay, and what
| was the hourly rate if I can ask? I'm wondering if it is a
| reasonable angle for some of us old-timers to get into. I'd have
| to charge an amount comparable to software consulting, and I'd
| expect most people to not be willing to pay that out of pocket,
| but maybe I misunderestimate (sic) this crowd.
|
| Weirdly, in one job interview they asked if I was willing to
| mentor junior devs. I said yes, they hired me, but the subject
| never came up after that. In another, the topic never came up at
| all, nobody approached me for mentoring at the job, but my
| management later hassled me about missing their expectations
| about it.
|
| The article is generally pretty good.
| chkhd wrote:
| Good article.
|
| In my personal experience a good mentor will never patronize but
| will still manage to convey their, usually higher, expectations
| for kind and quality of your work.
|
| The best mentors I've had were also extremely good at receiving
| and processing feedback themselves because they honestly loved
| learning and wanted to be better as much as I did.
|
| I'd had number of mentors, and myself almost a decade of
| experience teaching technical classes and 1:1 private lessons
| before I got into mentoring other SDEs at work and was amazed by
| how much I learned even just from first few relationships.
|
| Coaching and mentoring really are so different.
|
| I have definitely seen organizations where either the culture or
| the "climate" all but prevented effective mentor / mentee
| relationships no matter the effort. Really don't miss working at
| those places, probably the most burned out I had ever been in my
| career.
| gls2ro wrote:
| I disagree with the definition of the mentoring and coaching from
| the article.
|
| Maybe the author definition is from sports, but outside it here
| is how I see (and how many of people that I encountered so far
| see) the difference between coach and mentor:
|
| In a coaching relationship the coache sets the agenda not the
| coach. The coach is more backseat than a mentor. The coach is
| there to walk along the coachee on the coachee path while
| providing guidance when asked, usually in the form of guiding
| questions or helping navigate various points of views or helping
| go through decision frameworks.
|
| In a mentor relationship the mentor sets the agenda together with
| the mentee. A mentor has a more active role in the agenda
| providing active guidance and feedforward. The mentor and the
| mentee walk together on a path they both agreed on.
|
| As an example:
|
| If I would go to a coach and say ask about should I learn Elixir
| or not taking into consideration my Ruby background, then the
| coach will not answer yes or not. But should help me discover for
| myself the answer. It will usually help me look at this question
| from various points of view or can provide a decision framework,
| but the answers (or the content of my answers) will always be
| mine or my own discovery. So they will not state "Elixir is like
| Ruby" or "Elixir is not like Ruby" but they might ask "How can
| you assess if Elixir is like Ruby?" or "What is the smallest
| project that you can create to see if you like Elixir".
|
| If I would go to a mentor and ask about should I learn Elixir I
| expect them to tell me pro and cons of Elixir and also have an
| opinion about if Elixir is really similar with Ruby or not and
| even express their preference for this programming language or
| the other.
|
| So I choose to go to a mentor or coach depending on what outcome
| I want to have and what experience they have.
|
| PS: Please take the Elixir and Ruby just as an example of a
| technical matter to be discussed with a coach or mentor.
| soneca wrote:
| hmmmm in my mind I had the exact _inverse_ definition of what
| you said. For me "mentor" is exactly what you defined as
| "coach" and for me "coach" is exactly what you defined as
| "mentor".
|
| I never was or had any formal mentor or coach, so there is
| that.
| gls2ro wrote:
| I think maybe in the end it does not matter how you named
| them as long as the interaction bring you value.
|
| For me the name is important mostly related to setting my
| expectations about what can I get from working with one or
| the other.
| xdg wrote:
| The terms are used so interchangeably by people that I'm not
| surprised you might disagree. I looked at a bunch of
| definitions and tried to distill a useful distinction.
|
| Given that people hire coaches, but usually not mentors, the
| distinction for me is that a coach is engaged towards a goal
| and therefore is more directive of what you need to do to get
| there.
|
| I don't think your example question is a great one for
| exploring the distinction because it's a single, binary
| question. But even in your example, despite the coach
| responding with questions, you describe the coach as pushing
| you to go do some work: figure out the differences yourself, or
| come up with a project to explore the question.
|
| In that sense, I see the coach as "setting the agenda" whereas
| the mentor is having a more open-ended conversation about it.
| gls2ro wrote:
| Hmm maybe you are right and the example is not very good.
|
| Let me try to rephrase it in a way:
|
| I think the main difference for me is that I go to the coach
| to support me to solve problems/matters by myself and they
| are there supporting my process but I expect them to have
| less influence on the actual content/solution itself. To
| summarize the coach does not give advices nor they should
| impose best practices.
|
| While I go to the mentor expecting them to offer me advice
| and guidance/best practices.
|
| In this I choose (very rarely) a coach to explore problems
| that I think don't have a universal solution or the solution
| is subjective like "Should I move to management or continue
| on the technical path" or "What is best for me: freelancer or
| employee?"
|
| And I go to mentor to get concrete advice/guidance on
| specific matters like "How to increase my income as
| freelancer" or "How to start a new career in X".
|
| As I write this it seems that for me I see coach as a person
| that can help me discover the why and the mentor is someone
| that can help me discover the how.
| xdg wrote:
| > for me I see coach as a person that can help me discover
| the why and the mentor is someone that can help me discover
| the how
|
| That's not how I see it, but you expressed that really
| clearly. If that distinction works for you, then that's
| great!
| Pentamerous wrote:
| I've worked with some psychologists giving business
| consulting, and they would use the definition from the
| International Coaching Federation (ICF), which is that
| coaching is "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking
| and creative process that inspires them to maximize their
| personal and professional potential".
|
| So in that sense a coach would not set the agenda at all, nor
| be directive of what you need to do to get there, quite the
| opposite in fact. They keep asking questions and pushing you
| to figure out what you need to do to get there, which means
| that a coach can theoritically help you even if not in the
| same field as you.
| xdg wrote:
| I've also worked in consulting in a past career, and I've
| had a hired coach, and the line you quote with words like
| "partnering" I would describe as part of marketing the
| product. They're not exactly going to say "hire us to push
| you out of your comfort zone", but that is the role.
|
| You said: "they keep asking questions and pushing" --
| that's what I mean by setting the agenda. As I mentor, I
| don't see my role as "pushing". Questioning, sure.
| Providing perspective, sharing my stores, yes. Actionable
| feedback on skills is the closest I'd come to "pushing" and
| even then, they can take it or leave it.
|
| When I see people talking about coaching, I often see --
| directly or indirectly -- some aspect of the role of the
| coach to be to "bring out their best". I rarely see words
| like that used to describe mentoring relationships.
| gls2ro wrote:
| You made me think more about this subject with this
| comment. In a way - due to different incentives - I think
| you are right about the outcome.
|
| As the coach is mostly hired and the mentor internal it
| might be that the coach has more incentive to push
| someone to bring their best while the mentor - having as
| main focus another job and doing mentorship as a side
| task - will offer advice/guidance but will not have the
| same incentive to follow through.
|
| Anyhow I agree there is not a standard definition of what
| a coach or mentor is and what they should do.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| mentor: a trusted counselor or guide [1]
|
| coach: one who instructs or trains [2]
|
| When there's some doubt about meaning, I find it useful to
| wonder how other people might interpret the words I say, and I
| have found that a dictionary is a good way for communities and
| societies to agree on what those words mean. I do not say this
| to be snarky. I used to be surprised to learn that some words I
| thought I knew had a different, if related, meaning. Now, if
| say I was presented with an article that I wanted to comment on
| its use of words, I will look up those words first to see if
| perhaps I am the one that is out of touch with my peers.
|
| I am a mentor, a mentee, and have had life coaches and sports
| coaches. While I have paid life coaches, i.e I am setting
| goals, that's very different than a coach within a corporation:
| perhaps the distinction for coach is "Who is paying the coach?"
| A mentor, however, is very much a counselor / guide, even
| though they are paid by the company. Another distinction is
| that coaches are, to some extent, accountable. They are paid to
| achieve a result. Mentors just don't have the responsibility.
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mentor
|
| [2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coach
| revskill wrote:
| In my experience, one fast and practical way, is to assign
| issues, from small to big.
| scollet wrote:
| In some fewer words I would say that the force of mentorship
| should not exceed the strength of pushing a canoe into a river.
|
| You're not there to set hurdles. You're there to recognize when
| someone is fighting the upstream flow or have embanked themselves
| in temporary enlightenment.
| sefrost wrote:
| After being an independent contractor (software engineer) for a
| decade I am now a full time employee and in my first formal
| mentor-mentee relationship. I would love to hear about positive
| experiences people have had from mentoring as I'm still feeling
| out the relationship and wondering where it can go.
| testudovictoria wrote:
| Good mentors nudge and maybe push; they never shove.
|
| The best mentor I ever had helped me orient myself when I had
| no idea what I wanted to do. My answers were always, "I'm not
| sure. As long as I'm actively developing, I'll likely be fine."
| This wasn't quite true. Working on feature sets that didn't
| make sense with the code's architecture only to be thrown out 3
| months later was rough.
|
| She was the one that encouraged me to work on skills during
| work hours. No employer is going to miss 1/40 hours when it's
| used for professional development that directly benefits them.
| She encouraged me to stick with learning new things when I was
| ready to phone it in. AWS certs aren't hard to pass, but I
| probably wouldn't have taken the test without her push. I would
| have never dipped my toe into management. I found that
| management wasn't for me, but it was a better experience than
| resting on my laurels for a year.
|
| A good mentor is like a good friend checking in on you from
| time to time, but the relationship is professional. Everything
| pertains to your professional goals (or in support of) from a
| place of wanting the mentee to succeed.
| ford wrote:
| > Like a lot of soft skills, we're rarely taught how to mentor
|
| ^ This is one of the first lines in the article. If I had to
| guess I'd say most people here spend a relatively small amount of
| time learning about _how_ to do their job vs actually _doing_ it.
|
| For me this is a good reminder that actively/intentionally
| investing a couple hours per week in learning about how to do
| things - technical or not - and evaluating myself will probably
| have a higher ROI than spending those hours doing the thing
|
| This reminds me of some of the ideas discussed in this post [0]
| from a few days ago.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29692029
| hinkley wrote:
| There should be another article on how to find a mentor. Half
| the time I'm aping things that were done for me ten+ years
| prior, from a mix of agreement, lack of better ideas, or
| finally figuring out what they were trying to tell me/didn't
| tell me.
|
| If you haven't seen it, how do you do it?
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Spend as much time as you can working around really good
| programmers. You'll unconsciously pick up their patterns of
| thinking and coding. It's almost like a telepathic transfer
| that takes place even if they aren't actively teaching or
| mentoring you.
| michael_j_ward wrote:
| This desire might be higher for me because I've been working
| independently for a few years, but I would pay gladly pay many
| dollars in dues to a community built around technical skills
| development where members are expected to both _learn_ and
| _mentor_.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| exercism.org (formerly .io) is a community encouraged to both
| learn and mentor. I'm not affiliated, just a user who has
| drifted into and out of the community in both roles over the
| years.
| Swizec wrote:
| "if you give me 5 hours to cut down a tree, I will spend the
| first 4 sharpening my axe"
|
| It's a great motto and easily taken too far. Often the best way
| to learn is to get started. Tacit knowledge is best learned by
| doing.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Indeed. I've known many people that, if given 1000 hours to
| cut down a tree would spend 4 hours sharpening the axe, 500
| hours watching YouTube tutorials on cutting down trees, 300
| hours on axe reviews, and 195 hours arguing online about how
| to do it.
|
| I've sometimes been that person.
| LanceH wrote:
| I can't get it done without numerous trips to Home Depot.
| At least one of those trips will be immediately after
| another, to buy what I was supposed to buy on the first
| trip, but where the first trip ended with me picking up a
| lot of other things.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Remember who said it - Abraham Lincoln. He already knew how
| to use an axe.
| mysticllama wrote:
| i really enjoy this motto, personally; especially since i
| have taken up the hobby of handtool woodworking for the last
| few years. i decided that i would invest time in learning to
| sharpen and maintain tools before i did much work with wood
| and for me that has paid huge dividends. working with keen
| tools vs. dull ones is night and day. but i was working on my
| own time : )
|
| all that said, i completely agree with you that this is not a
| good motto for a novice at work -- if you are capable at
| handling an axe, having it razor sharp is going to markedly
| improve your results, but if it's your first go at swinging
| an axe, i really hope you don't spend 80% of your time
| fiddling with a sharpening stone...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's where the metaphor breaks down (while the intended
| idea stands perfectly fine), the reason you don't want to
| waste time making your axe perfectly sharp is that you must
| learn how to use it first, not because you should just
| forget about it and go chopping trees.
|
| It has some parallels to most skills, as most times you
| will only discover your deficiencies by doing it. But it
| doesn't mean you shouldn't train, it only means that
| training without ever practicing won't lead you anywhere.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| One thing I sometimes point out to software engineers Im tasked
| with mentoring at work is the importance of showing other
| engineers that you care about the code and the questions you're
| asking via slack etc by proof reading what you write and
| reviewing your own code before reaching out to others for help.
| The frustration of reading ia garbled slack message or pulling
| over to look at a code snippet and realizing the person didn't
| even look over it themselves is real and has real negative
| consequences in terms of professional perception.
|
| Like when someone misspells radical candor in the second sentence
| of a blog post about mentoring.
|
| Seriously though, everybody makes mistakes but when I do slip up
| like this I don't expect people to engage with what I'm writing.
| And I do think proof reading is an incredibly important skill for
| new and experienced software engineers.
|
| [edit] I just noticed the author is a staff engineer at MongoDB.
| He can misspell whatever he wants. I recant my sassiness.
| xdg wrote:
| Thanks! Fixed. We're all human. :-)
|
| And now I've discovered that vim spell check skips words with
| leading markdown symbols like `*randical`. I'll have to dig
| into that more.
|
| Update: pasting the web page to Google Docs found a few more
| typos. I fixed those, too. Usually I print and read to find
| typos, maybe I skipped that this time. Good reminder to do that
| and the Gdocs review. Really: thanks for the reminder,
| regardless of the sassiness. :-)
| Forricide wrote:
| > And now I've discovered that vim spell check skips words
| with leading markdown symbols like `*randical`. I'll have to
| dig into that more.
|
| Taking a quick look, for me it seems that (Neo)Vim spell
| check skips anything in italics or bold. No highlights
| whatsoever anywhere in that region. Definitely not something
| you want to realize _after_ publishing articles!
|
| Edit: Considering the comment about using :syn off, seems
| like this is probably a conflict of some kind with the way
| Vim actually italicizes/bolds things in terminals that
| support it, now.
| CodeIsTheEnd wrote:
| Anything longer than a few sentences I'll write in vim and am
| always horrified when I copy to Gmail or Google docs and find
| spelling mistakes, duplicated words, and incomplete sentences
| everywhere.
| pkdpic wrote:
| [posting from my primary account]
|
| I really am sorry for being a troll and writing the kind of
| comment that bums me out on a regular basis. This seems like
| a good post and a good discussion.
|
| It can just be frustrating for those of us that have a hard
| time getting traction when we post projects etc on sites like
| HN. It can manifest into petty toxic behavior especially in
| comment sections.
|
| In the words of Paul Doherty... "I'll do better next time."
| tiddles wrote:
| Aspell is a good interactive spell checker for just before
| publishing.
|
| 'aspell -c text.md'
| xdg wrote:
| Thank you! I just checked and it does not ignore markdown
| prefixed words.
|
| Also, I found that `:syn off` gets vim to spell check
| within markdown formatting.
| ecnahc515 wrote:
| You may have just finally explained why I frequently find
| spelling mistakes and using vim's spell check. Thanks for the
| tip!
| dd444fgdfg wrote:
| I'm*
| royaltjames wrote:
| Ironic that you pointed out an error in blog post's 2nd
| sentence when you also have one in your 2nd sentence. Either
| that or a nag trap. Or an unconscious parallel humility.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Or an example of Muphry's Law.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_Law
| selljamhere wrote:
| I usually have a knee-jerk reaction when I see grammar and
| spelling errors in blogs, but I try to remind myself that these
| posts aren't published works that made it through an editorial
| staff. Mistakes happen, especially when the author isn't a
| professional writer.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| I agree, the guys clearly legit. I was just indulging some
| recreational morning pedantry before actually getting some
| work done.
| organsnyder wrote:
| I wouldn't normally point this out, but you're missing an
| apostrophe (should be "guy's"). Good example of Muphry's
| Law.
| d3ckard wrote:
| You mean Murphy's Law, perhaps?
| organsnyder wrote:
| Nope, I mean Muphry's Law:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
| pc86 wrote:
| This is all true of course, but is it really so much to
| expect someone to proof-read something they're publishing?
| All things being equal, more of these types of simple-to-
| catch errors will make people think less of your [skill,
| dedication, attention to detail, etc.], whether right or
| wrong.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I ran a very popular site for a decade and won multiple
| writing awards. There are many elements that make a well
| written piece, and of course, spelling and grammar are two
| important ones.
|
| Unfortunately, over 12 years, I had two spelling mistakes
| slip through my hours of editing and proofreading. Some
| people absolutely eviscerated me for it. I mean, how could
| I not know how to spell X word? I must be a moron! In my
| opinion, these "simple-to-catch" errors are not always
| simple-to-catch when the writer knows what it is supposed
| to say and they are trying to proofread their own work.
|
| That said, it proves you're right -- people do think less
| of you when you make such a mistake. I think we should all
| strive to cut people a little more slack, at least on
| Slack.
| flakiness wrote:
| I don't think adding a jerk-ish edit helps you sounding a
| engaging and/or caring mentor although I admit that I was
| almost bursting out. Being consistent is hard, but let's try
| within the same <textarea>.
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| I mean it, he's a more accomplished engineer and mentor than
| I'll ever be. That's why I added the edit.
| flakiness wrote:
| All right, So I'm more cynical than I was aware of :-)
| xupybd wrote:
| Some rush and are sloppy.
|
| Some are burnt out and unable to focus.
|
| Some have dyslexia and are trying harder than you'll ever know
| to proof read.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I agree, but you can generally differentiate these cases and
| handle them appropriately.
|
| If someone is burnt out, the attitude is typically the tell
| regardless of care. It's _deliberately_ sloppy.
|
| One of the best engineers I ever worked with had dyslexia and
| by God if his class names weren't the funniest things I've
| ever seen, but they were consistent and the structure and
| documentation was thoughtful.
| eatonphil wrote:
| The biggest thing I've learned when being in (loose) teacher or
| mentor relationships is NOT to push someone to do what I think
| makes the most sense or that I think strongly is the easiest way
| to go. Instead the best thing to truly help someone out is to
| encourage them to do what they WANT to do.
|
| The reason is because even if there truly is a simpler way, it
| isn't always simpler for someone in their current position based
| on their current biases/experience/knowledge/etc. But what you
| WANT to do is a really powerful motivator and the most important
| thing is that you keep trying things and get better eventually.
| angryasian wrote:
| I disagree, in that you sometimes you do need to get the person
| to see things your way. As a mentor you should provide /
| present options. Failure is a powerful lesson, but being able
| to learn without failure is just is the same outcome.
| eatonphil wrote:
| I didn't say I don't present people options. I just said I no
| longer push them on one.
| angryasian wrote:
| >I just said I no longer push them on one.
|
| Yeah this is what I don't agree with. As a leader, you act
| as a shield to the people that report to you. You may be
| privy to information or have a better view of the overall
| big picture. Sometimes there are burdens you don't want to
| put on the people that report to you. We can only be so
| transparent a lot of times.
|
| Theres going to be times where you'll need to have them
| align with overall company goals etc.
| eatonphil wrote:
| I'm considering mentor and manager as separate roles.
| Sometimes I've held them both. More frequently I've been
| a mentor and not a manager to someone.
|
| What you're describing is just a manager.
| aarongray wrote:
| > In mentoring relationships, usually the mentee sets the agenda.
| In a coaching relationship, usually the coach sets the agenda...
| Code review is a pervasive example of coaching being confused
| with mentoring.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Which is it? I'm confused. Is code review coaching or
| mentoring?
|
| Re-reading: code review is coaching I think. Because you're
| asking for directed feedback, not general life advice.
| lbriner wrote:
| It could be coaching or just business as usual.
|
| If the developer is young/new and you are reviewing their
| code expecting various mistakes that you can then "coach"
| them about, it could be part of coaching. However at other
| times, code review is just what you do as a second pair of
| eyes, you are not expecting to give coaching as a result of
| something you might spot, just feedback.
|
| I wouldn't worry too much about specifying things too
| specifically though!
| munchbunny wrote:
| It's coaching.
|
| The way I think about it is that it's coaching if you are
| making decisions for them about the path they should take. It
| works here because writing code is a fairly general skillset.
|
| With mentoring, the crux of the problem is that you're trying
| to help them navigate their specific situation. And in my
| experience both as a mentor and a mentee, "where are they
| trying to go and what do they really want?" is actually the
| hardest part, and it's not something you can consistently
| answer because it's their experience and you'll never fully
| understand the nuances of it. You can't lay out the path for
| them, you can only (try to) help them see further down the
| path they're already on.
| xdg wrote:
| Maybe this is a useful way to think about it: I'd argue that
| doing code review for everyone on a team doesn't mean I'm a
| mentor to everyone on the team. I'm doing a task that is part
| of my job -- to coach the team on coding -- and they have to
| consider my comments whether they want to or not.
|
| But if an engineer approaches me and says "in my last
| performance review, I was told my code isn't very well
| structured; can you help me?" and I walk through their code
| with them, then I'm mentoring. It's skill mentoring, in this
| case, which, as I said, has the most overlap with coaching.
| Same activity, but different context.
|
| But as someone else said, this distinction isn't really the
| important part of what I wrote. So if people disagree on the
| terminology, that's just fine.
| derwiki wrote:
| Neither?
|
| > Code review is part of the job
| jrodthree24 wrote:
| As a senior engineer mentoring is often part of the job
| sroussey wrote:
| One thing people forget: let your mentee fail. Don't bring the
| business down, of course. But do let them fail -- there are good
| lessons to be learned and failure is a great way to do so with an
| emotional impact that lasts much longer than an intellectual one.
| syspec wrote:
| Unrelated rant, and not saying this is the case here I'm sure it
| is not from reading the authors blog. However, anyone notice how
| 4/5 developers describe themselves as mentors? I've intereviwed
| so many people who describe themselves as mentors yet could not
| answer fizzbuzz
| ford wrote:
| 4/5 developers could (and maybe should be mentors) - assuming
| they are all competent and all have different skill levels, you
| could have
|
| L5 mentors L4 who mentors L3 and so on.
|
| Related, more cynical take - being a mentor is often a factor
| in promotion & hiring, and being viewed as a mentor will make
| you more likely to be promoted or hired.
| angryasian wrote:
| The failure here, is engineering leaders are rarely chosen for
| their soft skills and ability to mentor vs their technical
| expertise. Sounds like you only care about the latter, adding
| to the current system
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| I would argue that you have to have competence and ability in
| the area you seek to mentor in, otherwise you are simply
| spreading bad advice around. If you can't complete FizzBuzz
| you probably shouldn't be mentoring others in software
| engineering. That doesn't mean you have to be a savant at
| your occupation but there is an expected level of capability.
| angryasian wrote:
| Disagree, you can find mentors in many areas. Outside of
| core competencies. It really depends on what level you're
| at in your career. Yes a Sr engineer mentoring a Jr
| engineer, absolutely. A director of engineering mentoring a
| engineering manager, not so much.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Perhaps this is because for some programmers, their career path
| takes them from writing code to a broader leadership path
| (mentoring, management, tracking problems, organizing consensus
| between groups, etc), and they may have stopped actually being
| a programmer years ago without necessarily even noticing.
| Unused skills atrophy, so it wouldn't surprise me to see
| candidates who are experienced mentors and leaders but can no
| longer write code on a whiteboard (although failing to fizzbuzz
| is a bit extreme).
|
| Of course, maybe I'm rationalizing and it's just that
| candidates who aren't fresh out of college need to claim some
| leadership credentials, and they don't want to lie and say
| they've formally led or managed anybody, so they just make
| vague statements about mentoring in the hopes that you check
| the right box on the hiring rubric.
| lmilcin wrote:
| It is known (and proven) that most people grossly overestimate
| their experience and abilities.
|
| In software development it is even more egregious because, due
| to exponential growth of number of developers, most developers
| haven't had a chance to work with a real, good, expert
| developer.
|
| You need probably at least 10-15 years and more realistically
| about 20 years to grow to be expert at your field. And even
| then only small percentage grow to be truly experts, the rest
| become stuck somewhere along the way.
|
| How do you asses whether you are mentor material if you've
| never seen a real deal?
|
| You don't hear people who decided they are not mentor material
| yet -- you only hear from people who did.
|
| So this is the false positive problem -- given even small
| chance of false positive on deciding you are mentor material,
| given huge population of developers and very small population
| of actual good mentors, you are bound to have a lot of false
| positives.
| dasil003 wrote:
| On one hand I agree with you that experience matters a lot,
| and is often undervalued by SV/VC youth-worshipping culture.
| There's no substitute for having seen many different ways of
| doing things, the effect of decisions as technology
| ecosystems evolve over time, and the underlying human
| dynamics that drive outcomes in any large-scale human
| endeavor.
|
| On the other hand, experience is mostly orthogonal to
| technical and pedagogical skills. After decades of experience
| I've seen mentorship come in many forms, and I would never
| put some kind of litmus test on who is qualified to be a
| mentor. Ultimately it's about individual strengths,
| weaknesses and chemistry.
| tj-teej wrote:
| But why do you need to be an expert (20 years experience, and
| whatnot) to be a good mentor?
|
| You don't need to be an expert mathematician to be a great
| Math teacher; you don't need to be a happy well-rounded
| person to be a good therapist.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Because you need to:
|
| - have the knowledge (duh!)
|
| - have the experience to have had enough time to observe
| things in reality (vs theory) and have had the time to
| internalise and digest all of this
|
| - be mature
|
| While it is easy to get the knowledge, the rest usually
| cannot be skipped so easily.
|
| As to math, that is not a good example. Math is almost pure
| knowledge and intelligence and so a bright kid can acquire
| that knowledge and quickly pass to his peers assuming they
| are intelligent enough.
|
| Unless you really mean Mathematics. Like how to advance the
| field. Then it is not as easily transferable knowledge. I
| know, I studied theoretical mathematics.
|
| Software development is only in small part driven by
| knowledge. If you think software development is knowing
| programming languages and frameworks and AWS and
| certifications you are waaaay off the target.
| colmvp wrote:
| I think your advice holds for people who are well on
| their way into their careers, but even with someone with
| half the years of experience (i.e. 7-10 years) can be
| invaluable to someone starting out in the field.
|
| I don't think I would've been able to right my career had
| I not had a dev with about ten years experience mentor me
| for a year. Granted, he might be an edge case since he
| learned teaching before becoming a programmer, but
| nonetheless his empathy and encouragement on top of some
| lived experiences was invaluable to me.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Nobody said mentor is the only way to get help.
|
| I have this model where you can get regular help with
| what you want and mentor help with what you need.
|
| Mentor will be mature and experienced enough to be able
| to recognise your particular needs and be able to adjust
| to you. Mentor will be able to understand their own
| limitations and adjust for it, too.
| passivate wrote:
| The term has simply gotten diluted, just like the phrases
| "good at math" or "being good with computers" can mean I can
| do basic addition mentally and I can setup your email
| software. It's not a fight worth fighting as people will tend
| to find the path of least resistance that gives them the most
| gains. Its the opposite of the imposter syndrome, also the
| 'fake it till you make it' mantra. IMO, its not really that
| bad in s/w dev because "Talk is cheap, show me the code".
| jtsiskin wrote:
| Exponential growth also pushes down the time when you need to
| become a mentor. If the field was totally stable (retirement
| rate = graduation rate, and everyone retires after 40 years
| in the field, greatly simplified model), then each new joiner
| could be paired with a mentor of 20 years experience, and
| only needs to become a mentor after 20 years. But if the
| field is growing exponentially, the age drops significantly.
| I'm sure someone could calculate this; it's almost like the
| inverse of the retirement age, population change, and social
| security question
| mrkentutbabi wrote:
| Not only soft skills, hard skills at the high level also hard to
| come by.
| lwb wrote:
| This articulated for me one of my biggest frustrations with
| traditional 1:1s with managers I've had throughout my career: by
| these people I want to be coached, not mentored.
|
| Most 1:1s have been driven by me, at the explicit behest of the
| manager. "I'm here for you" and "this is your time" are/were
| common phrases. I found this particularly annoying as a new grad
| when I really didn't know what I didn't know and just wasn't
| getting a lot of mileage out of those conversations.
| [deleted]
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