- Take advantage of flexible scheduling
A person’s meeting availability is more open when they don’t have to physically commute to and from a location. In person, someone might not be available at 7pm every Tuesday, but over a Slack call, it might be perfect.
2. Set a regular time, then confirm
A weekly penciled-in appointment reduces the cognitive load of having to prioritize and coordinate meeting times between two busy people. Since “life happens,” message your mentor the day, or morning, before to confirm you can both make it, or to reschedule.
3. Try on the remote lifestyle
After Turing, do you imagine coding from the beach, or attending your team’s daily standup online — while you’re in the mountains?
Whether it’s a fully remote position, or an office role with some work-from-home days, remote work is a strategy for work-life balance that motivates many career changers.
You can’t say you weren’t warned: after virtual meetings with your mentor, you might find yourself loving remote life.
4. When in doubt, Slack it out
Did you know Slack calls are optimized for collaboration? Check out the screen-share! By “writing” on the screen, you can draw attention to lines of code or sections of a lesson you’re reviewing. And switching between your and your mentor’s views to share resources takes just a couple clicks.
5. Talk techy to me
For new programmers, it can be hard to verbalize that bug in the code. There’s an instinct to sit next to someone, point to your screen, and say, “Then it failed here, so I looked there, but I only saw this, and now it’s doing THAT!”
Since my mentor and I couldn’t always rely on non-verbal cues, I got lots of practice explaining my technical thought process, step-by-step.
Later, at interviews (#whiteboarding) and at my first job, I had to be proficient in this style of professional communication. Practicing technical conversations with an experienced developer is invaluable, and your remote mentor is all ears.
Which of these 5 tips gives you the most confidence to start working with your remote mentor? Don’t forget to share your own tips for virtual collaboration with fellow remotely-mentored classmates and the Turing community.
