How does my 1–1 Mentoring work?
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Who am I?
I am a Software Engineer with over 15 years of experience in Web Technologies. What started as a hobby in about 2007 or so took me to various companies and countries and I have had the pleasure of working with some of the brightest minds in the industry. These days, I specialise on Fullstack Development using Javascript. I have reached a stage in my career where I can just dive into any codebase and thrive in it.
Also, I have an innate passion for teaching. I run the Siri’s School of Web where I teach/mentor Web Software Engineers. Mentoring is slightly different from teaching in the sense that there will be less of me explaining things and more of the students learning things on their own under my guidance. This is because I think that’s the best way to learn the web.
How does my mentoring help?
There are two main reasons a Mentor will make a big difference.
Fixing the knowledge gap
Web Software can be created in 2 ways — Properly and Improperly. Most Engineers start writing software (especially web software) in a haphazard manner and they quickly find themselves in a spot of bother. Web Development can get chaotic and confusing very quickly if not done the right way. Most Engineers take around 5 years to realise this and sometimes even longer. This is because they don’t invest time and energy into understanding the problems/code/concepts/quirks and jump straight into implementation/fixing due to time constraints. This gap in knowledge widens over time and becomes a big problem. Also, the Web is a vast and a fast evolving area. There seems to be a new tool to learn every day and it can get overwhelming. The mentoring is about fixing this knowledge gap. But no, I won’t be teaching a lot of tools, I will be teaching a lot of concepts. Reminds me of one of the best advices a colleague turned dear friend of mine gave me:
Learn concepts, not tools.
Preparing for Interviews
The bar for entry for Web Development these days is extremely low. And because of that, there’s an insane amount of competition at the bottom. But the best jobs are lucrative and go to the best Engineers. Typical interviews consist of the following rounds:
- Take-home test
- Technical rounds 1 and 2
- System Design round
- Behaviour/Leadership round
- A team fit/cultural round
This filters out most candidates. The mentoring caters to this too. Having attended over 200 interviews in my career, I have created a carefully curated syllabus which is aimed at learning everything from scratch and clearing the FAANG type interviews from a technical perspective. It includes basics to advanced concepts of —
- Datastructures & Algorithms
- Vanilla Javascript
- Frontend
- Backend
- Testing
- DevOps
- Cloud
- System Design
This is the curriculum I follow which has brought me tremendous success. Also, I have my own unique methods of imparting this knowledge. It is through a combination of —
- Reading
- Writing
- Research
- Courses
- Public Speaking
- Discussions
- Mock Interviews
Who is the mentoring aimed at?
The mentoring can be different for different people depending on their circumstances.
- Some use it to switch their career path.
- Some use it to hone their technical skills.
- Some use it to find a job or their next job.
- Some use it to seek help with work.
- Some use it to build their own product.
- Some use it to prepare for FAANG interviews.
- Some use it just to learn to code algorithmic problems.
Although people use this for various purposes listed above, the mentoring is primarily aimed at anybody who want to absolutely nail their Web Software Engineering skills from the basics to an advanced level. That said, anyone can take this up.
Who is this mentoring not aimed at?
If you are new to the world of programming, this is probably not for you.
If you have trouble being disciplined or if you are doing this because you had a sudden burst of motivation to succeed all of a sudden, this might not be for you. Because that fades over time.
How does it work?
To begin with, we will have a free initial call to understand your circumstances and motivations and goals from this mentoring. Based on it, we will then set up a curriculum or a study plan which we will tackle on a weekly basis. We will meet 1–1 once every week for an hour. During this one hour, we will do 2 things:
- Discuss your previous week’s progress, make sure you have learnt to a satisfactory level. We will be discussing your understanding of the concepts.
- Decide on the plan for next week.
How much does it cost?
- UK: £99/month
- EU: €99/month
- UAE: AED499/month
- India: ₹7999/month
- ROW: $99/month
What else should you know?
Mentoring is not like regular teaching. We build a professional connection over a year. During that time, my goal is to change you professionally. To ensure success, there are a few rules you need to follow.
This is an unapologetically no-excuse course. An intense amount of dedication is required to keep it at every day.
Life always comes in the way and it will take a lot of discipline, perseverance, time and emotion management to keep yourself motivated throughout the course. It is as much a test of your resolve as it is of your technical prowess.
I also encourage my mentees to give equal importance to things such as sleep, positivity, health and diet as such a course can be mentally and physically demanding.
I believe that mentoring my students is also about changing them into people of high ideals and integrity. Hence, I never ask for payments to be made. If the mentoring is making an impact in their life and career, I believe they will stay and pay, if not, they are free to leave without paying. I don’t announce this publicly since its susceptible to abuse.
Clearing FAANG interviews is not just about being thorough technically and behaviourally, but its also about experience. Something the mentoring cannot emulate is real world experience. But I am thinking of ways to mitigate this.
As far as jobs are concerned, my role is to teach and make you ready for interviews. I will not be able to directly influence the outcome of your interviews.
How do you enroll?
If you have read this and you are ready to take the plunge, reach out to me. You can just send me a message at the Siri’s School of Web Discord channel or on Instagram or wherever you found me from. Start by writing me about who you are, what you do and what your goal is for the next 1 year and we will take it from there.
