Why We Need a Mentoring Concept in our Software Engineer Team
This is what I learned after I implemented the Mentoring Concept on my team in my first year as a Head of Team Software Engineer
The Mentoring Concept is a culture that most Big Tech company doing right now. but most of the companies (the main business did not run side to side with tech, and tech only support them) who have a Software Engineer Team who support their business did not have a culture that Big Tech company has. and maybe a new or small startup or even a medium startup did not have this good culture too. this information at least that I know from most of my friends who work at the Software Engineer Team in Indonesia.
So, whoever you are, if you want to change your culture at least in your team, you can use or suggest this method to your Leader or Manager to improve your Software Engineer Team.
Imagine a world in which the vast majority of software engineer team like us wake up inspired to go to work, feel safe when they are there and return home feeling fulfilled by the work they do. yes , It’s not as crazy as you might think
—Simon Sinek the author of “Leader Eat Last”
you may think, is Simon Sinek use the word Software Engineer Team in his quotes? absolutely not hehe, I only change the word from people to Software Engineer Team. but the important thing is, can we achieve that? Yes of course!
The Mentoring Concept in Software Engineer or you may call it an IT Engineer too
In my team, there is not a Senior Engineer. I change it to Lead IT Engineer. so every person in my team who has senior skills will be the Lead. Lead IT Engineer will focus on review most of the code. but please don't focus on the diagram, what I want to share is Mentoring Concept. if you have a different team structure, for example, It's okay if you only want a Lead IT Engineer who will review the code of a Junior IT engineer and IT engineer.
Lead Engineer will be responsible for the growth of IT Engineer and IT engineer will be responsible for the growth of His Junior Engineer. with this, Lead IT did not have to share low-level knowledge or basic knowledge anymore to junior engineer, the Lead IT only will share about high-level knowledge such as the efficiency of code, repetitive code, modularization, and many things. so every engineer has an important role and will learn leadership skills automatically.
oh yes, In my team, I have :
- 3 Lead IT Engineers ( 2–3 years experiences)
- 2 IT engineers ( 0–2 years of experiences)
- 6 Junior IT Engineers ( zero experiences)
you need to note that I need 3–4 months for mentoring my engineers to be a leader. I reviewed and make some rules for them
and These are rules that I used in my team for mentoring
- you can’t ask your mentor if you didn't search it on your search engine first
- if you have a problem or you have an issue that you cant solves a maximum of at least 1 hour, immediately ask your mentor
- if you are a mentor and you cant answer your mentee question or solves the mentee problem, immediately ask your mentor
- focus on reviewing and growing your mentee so you will not be bothered anymore with his/her same question
- if your mentee has a problem, it’s your problem too!
- if there is a mistake, or bug in production because of your mentee, it's your mistake too because you are the reviewer and responsible for every mistake that your mentee does
- if there is a mistake, don't blame! you cant change the past! focus on solving the problem and learn from the mistake
- don't push the mentee to be perfect, there is no perfection! growing them with mistakes so they can learn from the mistake.
- review your mentee at least every 1 or 3 months
Imagine if your team, or maybe yourself excited for work because you will learn so many things, you will feel safe because whatever problem or mistake in your project and everyone will support you and nurture you.
There will be trust, safe, cooperation, and sense of purpose in your team. Simon Sinek Calls it Circle of Safety
Final Words
Leaders Eat Last, this phrase always on my mind. I think everyone can be a leader, and if the leader builds his team with care. I think the team will have the same energy, and all energy will be devoted to facing the common enemy as Simon said in his book. It’s amazing how well it works in my team.
this is a true story and what I learned from building my team for one year and for me there is room for more improvement of people development in my team. and I think every team is different, but I hope you can solve it and build your own team. so I hope you learn something after reading this. if you have a question, please ask me in the comment or email me. Thank you for reading!
