How Mentorship Can Supercharge Your Development Team

Mark Mucha, a principal software engineer in Seattle, discusses the transformative power of mentorship — for you and your team.

When Mark Mucha started mentoring junior software engineers nearly 10 years ago, he had very specific, inward-facing goals: Improve teams and alleviate pain points in the development process. Before long, though, his thoughts turned outward as he found how rewarding it could be to simply help someone grow as an engineer and as a person. That realization has stuck with him ever since, and it’s why he’s still contributing gobs of his time to mentoring engineers of all ages.

In this episode of the Ship It Show, Mucha, a principal software engineer at a major tech company in Seattle, discusses not only his evolution as a mentor and what you can learn from it, but also the qualities that every good mentor needs. First, and maybe most important? The ability to listen to a mentee’s questions and concerns and then dig a little deeper to figure out what they really need. “You have to peel the layers of the onion back,” he says. “You want to find the core of the issue.”

Heard enough and ready to dive into mentorship? Start by checking to see if your organization has a program in place. If it doesn’t, try pitching it to management in a language they’ll understand: “Most people will agree that growing people is an important part of business.”

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