The Importance of Having a Mentor

My first post was about how I started as a Software Apprentice at Pernix Solutions. The first day I learned a lot of things about Pernix, met new people, start learning Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Git, time management, goals and more. Every day here is a new experience, an opportunity of to learn or create something new.

In the process of adaptation to the company, I was assigned to a Mentor, a person who helps me understand how things work, ask for recommendations and teaches me about new technologies and is always there to clear my doubts.

The reason behind this post started a day in my university. While I was taking a course called Entrepreneurs’ Development I was listening to my professor talking about the importance of having a mentor, someone you can talk and share personal things to give you feedback about what are you doing with your life, goals, etc. I was very impressed because in that moment I understood that the company in where I’m learning a lot of things and gaining experience is conscient of how a mentor can change the way we do things.

Maybe I have defined the concept of a mentor, but this is how other people describe them:

“ A mentor is a person who acts as a guide or referent for another. ”

“ Trusted, experienced counselor who provides valuable guidance to younger colleagues. ”

In my experience, my mentor has helped me to see errors in the code I have done, to find information in an appropriate way on the internet, to explain how a function works and to see that it is important to keep learning to be better every day.

Many companies make the decision to start mentoring programs, where they can see some benefits such as:

  • Recruitment and Onboarding
    The promise of a supportive mentor in a structured mentoring program will attract the most capable and motivated candidates to your organization.
  • Talent Development
    Mentoring enables each of your employees to reach their full potential at your organization.
  • Skill and Leadership Development
    Mentoring develops employee skills and qualities that remain valuable beyond the duration of the mentoring partnership.
  • Knowledge Sharing
    With the current and impending retirement of millions of Baby Boomers and an aging workforce, it is crucial for organizations to retain the wealth of knowledge and experience of seasoned employees.

I think that these aspects are very important for a company, there a more than four but in short, I considered these to take into account.

At the moment I have had three mentors, who have helped me to start easily in Pernix as an apprentice. The last one has been my mentor for almost two and a half months, who has a great experience in the technology of Ruby on Rails and is who helps me to understand many things in the best way, many times in a fun and serious way as this requires.

A mentor just wants you to do things well and to be successful so that you can undertake for yourself the development of more and better skills, so if you are thinking on be part of an apprentice program with mentors, take part of it!

“ Your most important education is not happening in a class” — Jim Rohn

Thanks!

Felipe Salas Casasola

Written by

Software Engineer (ITCR).Dev at Wunderman Thompson.STEAM Professor. Nuxt/Vue, Electron, AEM, React, Rails, JS libs and more… ❤

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