Provide and Seek Technical Mentorship and Guidance

Provide and Seek Technical Mentorship and Guidance

1. As a senior engineer, I see it as my responsibility to mentor more junior members, guiding them technically and professionally.
2. A significant part of my leadership style involves mentorship and coaching.
3. I actively look for opportunities to mentor junior and mid-level engineers.
4. I make myself approachable for questions and offer guidance, not just answers, so they can grow.
5. I enjoy sharing my knowledge.
6. I’d also encourage peer mentorship within the team, as everyone has something to teach and learn.

Style

1. I lean towards Empowering & Trust-Based mentoring.

   The first point of contact and the last line of defense.

2. I like to give team members ownership of tasks, providing guidance and support, but trusting them to find solutions and learn from the experience. I focus on unblocking them rather than micromanaging.

How exactly?

This includes guiding them through

1. understand, navigate and overcome complex technical systems and challenges
2. develop good engineering skills and habits
3. learn new concepts
4. improve their design skills
5. offering to pair program on challenging tasks, help them debug, or explain a complex part of the system
6. ensuring they understand our codebase and best practices
7. Sometimes, a bit of targeted guidance or knowledge sharing is all that’s needed.
8. I try to ask questions that lead them to solutions rather than just providing answers, fostering their problem-solving abilities.
9. In code reviews, I ensure my feedback is constructive, specific, and kind, aiming to help them learn and improve.

What does this do?

1. I find that this sort of mentorship is incredibly motivating for them.
2. While not formal management, it involves fostering growth and ensuring quality.

Tags

1. How to find mentors?
2. Practices that work well when developers mentor other developers