A Mentorship Approach to Engineering
The word ‘mentorship’ is tossed around in Silicon Valley in the same way you hear words like ‘passionate’ and ‘innovative’. Getting and giving good mentorship is often the key to the best career development — even though the rewards may not always have as many dollar signs.
That idea can be hard to remember in an era where engineers get regularly wooed by recruiters with Michelin-starred-restaurant dinners. That kind of attention makes it too easy to forget that many of us (many of whom are specialists), from CTOs to associates, are ignited from a humble “spark” of mentorship. And looking for the right places to get — and give — that are important, especially in this era where engineering experience at the Tech Big Brand Names seem to dominate resumes.
For specialists, mentorship is all part of the give-and-take of developing talent through non-traditional means. (To be sure, there is a whole cottage industry now devoted to ‘non-traditional’ engineering with companies like Hack Reactor, Udacity, and General Assembly.)
For those on the receiving end of mentorship, the benefits are pretty obvious (new skills, professional connections, better knowledge, etc). But for seasoned developers, this might beg the question “I made it. How does passing my skills along benefit me?”
For seasoned developers, this might beg the question “I made it. How does passing my skills along benefit me?”
In reality the mentorship/mentee relationship is symbiotic. My own career as an engineer at Varo has been developed by learning alongside another engineer with a passion for teaching. In return, I have spent time mentoring and training soon-to-be engineers from non-traditional backgrounds both independently and with #BUILTBYGIRLS. I’ve yet to meet mentees that didn’t bring lessons of their own. Here are some of the things I have learned.
Why mentoring enriches our personal lives:
- Teaching brings us the satisfaction of knowing others’ livelihoods can be improved exponentially with our help.
- Mentees’ curiosity maintains our own hunger for knowledge. By watching others’ faces light up when they’ve learned something new, it makes us ask ourselves “What skills can be picked up next?”
- It increases our ability to simply explain complexity in day-to-day life, and makes us better communicators.
How it applies professionally:
- While on-boarding, when describing architecture, etc., it mitigates impatience when others struggle to grasp concepts. Instead, we gain the skills to map out large tedious systems in digestible ways.
- We become more willing, even inviting, to tackle hard problems as a group, rather than withdrawing and working in a silo.
- It helps in becoming less robot-like in our thinking. After adapting to a comfortable mindset, it seems that humans naturally fight for the approach that makes the most sense to us, not the one that’s best in a textbook. An example might be adhering to one design pattern because we know it’s ins and outs, rather than going with the one that’ll allow for easier A/B testing.
- Mentoring will often come with a chain of questions: “Why is it called NSURLRequest?” followed by “What is a request?” followed by “How does the phone turn the response into data?” Having worked with a luxury suite of APIs our entire careers, none of us truly know what’s happening under the hood at all times, but these rapid-fire questions make us aware of areas where we can improve, and then bring new knowledge to the team.
- Peers gain the confidence that they can count on you to compassionately transfer domain knowledge cross-functionally with leadership, product, design, etc.
What it means for Varo:
- During my time at Varo, I’ve spoken to several engineers in our organization, including leadership who have a “sensei” of their own such as our CTO Deep Varma (and he receives personal mentorship from the likes of LinkedIn execs.) With that in mind, Varo has established partnership with #BUILTBYGIRLS, and many of us, including a large percentage of engineering, have already experienced the benefits. To quote Rod Shokrian, a fellow developer and team member, “My mentee should be the one doing the teaching.”
- The partnership perfectly aligns with our social mission: “To help everyone make progress in their financial lives.” What better way to improve financial lives than to offer a means to gain financial success?
- Varo mentors will be able to hand mentees off to others with experience in their areas of interest.
- We benefit holistically when team members learn to give honest feedback with empathy.
- We’re given first dibs to train and eventually hire promising mentees.
Our engineering culture is one of mentorship. If you’ve taken a non-traditional approach to learning engineering or any other skill set, there may just be a place for you here at Varo. Check us out!
Ty is an iOS Engineer at Varo, and advocate for engineers from non-traditional backgrounds.
