Why did you decide to become a mentor?
Once I became a senior developer the idea of helping other developers learn new skills and techniques become more at the forefront of what I did in my day to day. To my surprise, I enjoyed it and yearned to help new developers at the company or junior developers who want to improve their skills.
During my previous job at cinch I created a new starter guide and also a weekly kata meeting to help every developer at cinch and for those who needed help on their ticket or libraries we used I took my own time out to mentor them.
Fast forward to the past 6 months, I joined a company where every developer is not a junior and therefore felt there wasn’t much space to help and mentor fellow developers. Consequently, I joined the mentor cruise so I can:
- mentor those who needs guidance
- educate those who need to learn the next important skill or library
- help those who need support on there current project
How did you get your career start?
Writing code for a living wasn’t something I was interested in as I wanted to become a historian when I was younger. I used to play around on my PC and apart from gaming I tried out Dreamweaver where I designed a desktop webpage using its interface, created a WordPress server and backend and made calendars using Photoshop but never took it seriously.
When I was in sixth form I spoke to a career advisor in regards to my future career. Tom the career advisor recommends trying out as a software developer due to the ‘Career Personality Profiler’. When looking at how to achieve this I could either go to university to do this or take an apprenticeship. I decided to take the advice and was an apprentice for a company in Manchester.
After completing my first certificate I decided to move on to a junior job to learn more and be part of a small company. Unfortunately, this leap was too big and after eleven months I left to join another place which can help me understand how to craft good quality code. I learned the majority of all my good practices and skills thanks to Codeweavers (the company I joined at this time) and I personally do not believe I would be in my current position if it wasn’t for them.
After nearly three years I decided to move on to other companies large and small to better understand the wider development world and now I am currently a senior consultant at Ensono Digital.
What do mentees usually come to you for?
I’ve only been on the platform for 5 months but I have had a variety of people that have come to me asking for help.
I’ve had people who are new to programming and are looking for a mentor to help them understand what are the best topics and skills to understand and learn for a beginner to prevent new programmers to go down a rabbit hole and learn something complicated and niche that isn’t needed for a junior.
In addition to those mentees, I have also had those who need expert advice and the option of their own projects. Typically they would come to me with problems they are facing on their project and I would consult how they can fix these problems or amend the architecture of the project to circumvent the issue entirely. Furthermore, the communication between mentee and mentor is vital here as the skills I can offer can only help once the problem and situation are clearly understood.
What’s been your favourite mentorship success story so far?
Out of the limited time I have mentored on the platform one of my mentees has had a successful story in regards to a promotion. He was promoted due to the way he has worked in his tickets and engaged the team due to his articulation of topics that now has a better knowledge of due to the mentoring he has had.
Over the next few months, I am hoping to have more success stories from either people starting in the development industry or to further excel in their current product to the next level.
What are you getting out of being a mentor?
There is a lot I am getting out of mentoring which overall has been very rewarding. First of all, seeing people learn something new is wonderful to see and see that lightbulb moment when they ‘get it’. In addition, I am getting more confident explaining my own knowledge in a personal manner to better educate the individual and gain that personal learning experience.
Mentoring also helps me explain something technical and complimented a stakeholder who doesn’t know how it works and that really helps me to become a better lead speaking face-to-face with clients.
Lastly and most importantly mentoring enables me to help others and the feeling of helping others and seeing a positive difference is great to see.