Why did you decide to become a mentor?
When I finished my coding bootcamp I was aimless and didn’t know what to do to land my first job. I struggled for 4 months before landing my first job but even then I joined a team of mostly junior and mid level engineers. I happened to reconnect with an old friend from college who had been working in start ups for a long time and he took me under his wing and showed me all of these hidden ladders for leveling up your career. Without his guidance, I definitely would never have progressed as quickly in my career.
His impact on me inspired me to help lift up others. I’ve always enjoyed teaching and helping others so mentorship was a natural fit for me. Seeing others achieve their goals is one of the best feelings out there.
How did you get your career start?
The CTO at my first company had a knack for finding hidden gems out of coding bootcamps. He was able to find people who were equally intelligent, ambitious, and kind. The developers he hired didn’t have tremendous amounts of work experience but we ended up kind of coaching each other through trail and error.
One of the developers who was only a year or two ahead of me in tenure had such a great attitude for teaching. He made things so welcoming to ask questions and learn. If I didn’t have such a friendly environment for my first job, I feel like my growth would have been stunted. That is why I feel like it’s so important for devs to actively seek out mentorship because it’s never a guarantee that the first job you land is going to have the ideal environment for growth.
What do mentees usually come to you for?
I’ve helped a pretty wide range of developers. I’ve given a few self-taught developers the structure and accountability they were missing from a bootcamp but at a fraction of the price. I’ve helped coding bootcamp grads and self-taught developers land their first job in software development. I’ve also helped junior or mid level engineers who work at small companies and don’t have the guidance that they need to level up to a senior level. I’ve used a wide range of tools, languages, and frameworks to deliver high quality software. I have familiarity with the frontend but am definitely more of a backend and/or infrastructure guy.
I’m pretty flexible with the way I structure mentorship; it really depends on the mentee’s situation. The biggest thing for me is that I’m going to give you the advice you need to hear and not the stuff you want to hear. I’m a nice guy but I don’t like to sugar coat things. After my mentees achieve their goals, we usually transition into a passive mentorship role where we touch base once a month to catch up, get updates on their development, and find any opportunities they may be overlooking at their current jobs.
What’s been your favourite mentorship success story so far?
There are too many for me to choose but they all end the same - the mentee reaches the goal that they set out for themselves (usually landing a job or getting a promotion). For me mentorship isn’t just a transaction though. I love staying in touch with my mentees and getting messages from them about getting promoted less than a year after they got hired or them getting assigned to lead a project despite being relatively early in their career. To be given that type of responsibility so early in your career says a lot about the individual.
What are you getting out of being a mentor?
Mentorship has helped me in a number of different ways. It’s been a great way to network with the next wave of software engineering talent. By setting up individual career goals and planning incremental milestones for people to reach, it’s really helped with becoming an engineering manager. And it’s given me a greater sense of confidence in my abilities knowing that I won’t be completely replaced by AI in the future :P