Hack@Brown 2015: A (new) Mentor’s Perspective

Last year, I co-founded Hack@Brown, the craziest-hardest-awesomest thing I had ever done. Last weekend, I returned as a mentor, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

Despite the usual surge of confidence I feel when I’m back at Brown, I felt extremely unqualified to be a mentor. I only had 7 months of industry experience and setting up development environments has always been my least favorite part of software engineering. Furthermore, I am not by any stretch of the imagination a Node.js/Django/[insert-non-PHP-framework-here] guru.

While teams settled in, I sat at the side of the room with some friends who were also mentoring for the first time. We commiserated over our inexperience and laughed at how a year ago we assumed all the engineers knew everything, but now we felt like we knew nothing. I thought a good mentor needed to have all the answers; my change in perspective began after a student approached asking for help on his all-freshman team.

A friend and I paired up to help the team of freshmen and we decided to use Flask, a Python web framework neither of us had used before. We started with the basics: what’s a database? What’s MVC design? How does Git work? As I explained these concepts to the team, I discovered I knew much more about these topics than I had realized.

I’m one of three new grad engineers at my company, so I spend every day learning new things that my coworkers already understand. After spending months focused on learning things I didn’t know, this was the first time I’d taken a moment to recognize how much I knew already.

Mentoring the team of students was incredibly empowering. Even though I was learning Flask along with them, the fact that I had taught myself new web frameworks before made me a useful resource. And by learning alongside the students, I could empathize with them as they learned the principles of web development, a new web framework, and Git all at the same time.

Though I was not able to spend the entire hackathon with this team, I was able to advise them through crucial steps including database design, setting up the application, and the initial bridging of front-end and back-end. The team was bright, motivated, and innovative. I was constantly impressed by how well they were able to pick up new concepts and apply them on their own.

At the end of the hackathon, first round judges released a list of finalists. Included on the list was the team of four freshmen I had mentored. To say I was proud was an understatement. In my opinion, these four represent everything a hackathon should be. They came in with only one semester of an intro course under their belts but left with an awesome project that won Best Web Service at their first hackathon. More importantly, they gained the experience, knowledge, and confidence to build future projects.

Hack@Brown’s focus on inclusiveness and beginner-friendliness creates an ideal environment for this this type of mentorship. By diverting the focus away from competition and towards learning, mentors and students are free to work and learn together without the pressure of beating other teams for large prizes. As more hackathons work to increase diversity in attendees, I hope they adopt these principles and encourage collaborative mentorship.

Mentoring at Hack@Brown was one of the most empowering experiences of my life. Despite my limited industry experience, I was able to help a team learn enough about web development to become finalists. In the process, I also came to recognize the extent of my own abilities.

Don’t let “lack of experience” prevent you from mentoring — if anything, it will make you a more effective mentor by helping you empathize with the students. Anyone who has experienced the struggles of learning a new development platform, whether it’s hardware, web, or anything else, can and should try mentoring at hackathons. In one weekend I went from uneasy, newbie mentor to confident, can’t-wait-for-the-next-one engineer ready to mentor at as many hackathons as possible.

Hack@Brown, thanks for another life-changing weekend. See you next year!