Why is mentoring important?

There is probably a proverb somewhere regarding my hacky translation of our proverb. This is the closes I got. I mean ChatGPT. (In Serbia: Није знање знати, знање је дати.)

In these recent days, I’m beginning to realise, how important it actually is to have a good mentor. To have someone who actually dedicates themselves, their time, energy, brain cells, etc to someones development, wellbeing and improvements. I’ve always known that in a way. But some things, over time and experience, you understand differently. More profoundly. This is one of those.

From time to time, I help out a really close friend of mine for something in his professional life. Either it being a mini debug session because an ORM is giving him issues, or some thought exchanging, guiding. I hate to brag, but I am in luck to have a lot more experience than him, so I tend to help out in any way I can. Even though, that is not nearly enough. We are not having full work days together and the luxury of working together so I can actually work with him on developing certain areas.

In those help out sessions, from time to time, I have a peak into his code. To be brutally honest. Quite often my reaction is, “oh my god“. His code is not bad. It’s actually done really well. On his level. But, his level should be quite higher in the amount of time has passed him being employed. So, my reaction is actually not aimed at him at all. I get disturbed by the non-amounts of time dedicated by his senior peers to him on his development. Even though he is solving complex problems in a good manner, he still has code blocks with:

public async Task<Something> GetThis() 
{
    await ...
    await ...
    await ...
    // Pardon my C# writting, I have never worked with it in my life. 
    // Though read a lot of its code
}

In my opinion, after two to three years of working experience, you should understand that having everything async, but await everything as well doesn’t really make sense. This tells me something else. No senior has ever challenged his perspectives and understandings of architecture/code design. They haven’t dedicated time to him to explain why this might not make sense. I was the first one. That pisses me off.

You don’t know what you don’t know

You don’t say Pavle?

Yeah yeah, I know. Stating the obvious here. But, think about it a bit more. You can’t even begin to comprehend something if you don’t know about its existence, right?

Yes, you can learn everything in the world on your own. But it would take you way too much time. Thats what the education system is for (not getting into it is it good or bad). Just imaging having to learn math from scratch. On your own. No books or anything. Well people had to do it for quite a huge number of years. Now with books and teachers, all that learning is squashed into few years of your life.

Same goes for mentoring. If you let a junior, wonder around, poke stuff and make it work somehow. Without guidance and knowledge sharing. They are going to be wasting huge amounts of time. And in the same time, expectations from them will rise, because if you work for two to three years, your potential future employers (or current ones) will expect certain levels from you. That you might not have. Not because you are on the wrong side, rather because you didn’t have any help and you are on your own. Lets be honest, advanced and good self learners are rare as diamonds. We all go through professors, books and mentors to have a good jump up.

Why you should mentor someone?

I was extremely lucky to have great mentors in several places I found myself working. From the very beginning (Shoutout to Victor and Igor). Yet, now I can be even more thankful to them, when I realise just how much it is important.

I encourage you. Take care of the less experienced. Teach them. Guide them. Challenge their perspectives and help them improve themselves where ever you can. Sometimes, that might get personal. Where you might need to help with a personal problem. Most of the times its code, design, software philosophy, etc. One of the most beautiful and fulfilling feelings is helping someone be better. And letting them take all the credit. Because it is theirs.

The biggest benefit of all. You will grow a lot and learn a lot. They can, should and will challenge your perspective. Their out of the box thinking pushes you to learn more and understand something more deeply.

Don’t fall in the trap that you have to control the knowledge. That you have to make every decision. That you have to be asked for every opinion. You destroy your peers improvements that way. Focus your efforts into them going through all of it with guidance. Sometimes pushback. It will be worth it in the long run. As they say, the best team lead (or manager) is the one that has to do absolutely nothing in his work.

What a Sunday rant. Have a nice one.