| I have mentored many junior developers through my career. And recently, started to train junior developers as a side gig. (Had been helping friends to get up to speed in their new jobs but wasn't charging anything for it.) So these are the developers who already have basics of programming but they usually don't understand whole ecosystem around it. For example, many don't understand version control, server vs local env, etc. Normally, many senior developers get really frustrated when junior devs ask them about such basic concepts. I used to be like that too, however, I learned to be patient and tried my best to help them. And some of my teammates started to ask me if I can help their friends in other teams/companies. So this is what I have learned about mentoring: * Encouragement - Unfortunately, tech world if full of genius jerks. Many junior developers get discouraged by such behavior. A lot of time I find myself convincing them that they will catch up to senior devs eventually. Sometimes, I feel like I am teaching them how to manage their senior developers/managers instead of teaching them technical topics. * Find out what their objectives are - Another big issue is that many developers have big egos and they would try to hide their ignorance by asking very specific question. If it's a senior developer, I would just answer the question. However, if it is a junior developer, I usually ask them what their end goal is and many times they are going down the wrong path. * Let them ask you questions and then use search engines to find answer together, even if you know the answer. * Code Reviews are great but you have to be sensitive towards junior developers. I usually make a small comment in CR and then meet with the developer to explain it further and to make sure they understand the reasoning completely. For example, many developers from non-English speaking countries have hard time understanding difference between verbs and nouns, and they name variables and methods which are hard to decipher. It is hard to explain that in CR but in-person much easier. Also English is not my native tongue so I also get criticised for my namings too still. So I can understand it can be hard to come up with a good variable name for non-native English speakers. * Help them find good training material. You cannot spend hours training junior developers, so make a list of good resources to learn from and ask developers to review them. These cannot be 40 hour course, but something more narrowly focused on their current problem. |