Why did you decide to become a mentor?
I don’t think I can call it mentorship but I’ve previously thought tennis back in Brazil and when I was doing my bachelors. That thought me skills that I couldn’t think of learning in any other scenario: patience, compassion, leadership and new ways of thinking just to name a few.
When I was a software developer at IBM I was presented with the opportunity to become a mentor for fellow IBMers. I didn’t think twice and started mentoring even though I didn’t know what awaited for me on the other side. But one thing I knew, it would be fulfilling and I would be helping others by sharing what I love doing most.
Each experience with each mentor has proven unique, which makes being a mentor even better. And the great thing about mentoring others on programming, career progression and other things is that I also learn with each session. Having to explain the same thing, with a different point of view to others unlocks other that I couldn’t think before which is one of the main reasons I keep doing so.
How did you get your career start?
The start of my career was an accident. A good accident. I played tennis my entire life, to a point that it became an obsession. I quit mid-way through high school to play tennis in the morning, afternoon and evening. That’s when I started playing professionally, which lasted around 2 years. At that point of my tennis career I had to make the decision to either pursue my post-graduation studies or continue to attempt the so claimed tennis career. But why not both?
That’s when I went to the US under a full Varsity D1 tennis scholarship. But you may ask, which major did you choose? Well, at the time I wanted to go into civil engineering or architecture but the university I chose did not have any of those major. Therefore, I told these exact words: “just put me in a major that has computers and technology in it”. They then proceeded to putting me in an Honors Computer Science major.
My first semester I had this C++ course where you learn to program by drawing with code. It was love at first sight. A tennis passion slowly transformed into coding passion. I went to graduate with a major in computer science and a minor in math. After graduating I moved back to Brazil, but not adapting myself back there I decide to pursue my masters. That was when I came to Canada to University of Waterloo to complete my masters of mathematics in computer science. My first job after that was at IBM where I worked as low level programmer for the Java Runtime team trying to optimize garbage collection for Java.
What do mentees usually come to you for?
I have had mentees come asking for all sorts of guidance. I’ve had mentees coming to me for career advice, learn how to program, learn a new database, public speaking and further guidance on how to become expert on a certain programming language. I would say most of them come for learning a new programming language.
I don’t have a recipe for guiding mentees as I treat each case by case. Even if 2 different mentees have the same goal e.g. learn how to program in Python, chances are that I’ll have a different methodology for both as different people learn in different ways. Most mentees come with a clear goal in mind and a lot of them know their learning style. But I also had some mentees that just wanted to learn something and that’s it. In those cases I try to become almost like a therapist, where I try to guide them by asking questions and trying to be a compass for their inner Indiana Jones.
What’s been your favourite mentorship success story so far?
Recently I had a mentee come to me asking for career advice as he wanted to switch move from his industry to the software industry, in short, he wanted to become a software developer even though he had no bachelors and very little background. His goal was to get interviews, and when I first looked at his resume I knew there was a long way ahead of him. But how can we do this the most optimal way so that he can start having interviews as soon as possible? I was lucky enough because he was very motivated. Anyways, we came up with plan to empower not only his resume with skills, but also with approaches to job search that would help him land those interviews. In 3-4 months we started to see interviews getting landed in front of him. Magical!
What are you getting out of being a mentor?
I think this brings me back to the same reasons as to why I decided to become a mentor. With time, you realize that in order to teach something, you better be good at that something. Furthermore, as I mentioned before each mentor has their own way of learning a certain subject, so even though I’m the expert on the subject I need to re-word or come up with new ways to explain a concept, and by doing so it gives me the opportunity to seeing that subject and others with different eyes.
One thing that I haven’t put too much emphasis but it’s probably the top reasons why I keep doing mentorship, is the fulfilment of seeing the progression of a mentee from the baby steps until they’ve accomplished their goal. For those who had to take care of a pet, or seeing the progression of a fellow pupil, or just watering a plant probably had a similar feeling.