[kodah]

Not going to lie, I went into reading this was very low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. It's worth noting that mentorship in the corporate world doesn't need to depend on level, it can be a skill gap someone wants to fill.

One thing that I think I may deviate with on this article is that mentoring shouldn't be started after coding; you should really be mentoring all along the way in your career. If the first time that you mentor is when you hold the title "Senior" then you're bound to screw up in some major ways and those screw ups will be amplified because of your perceived power and position. If you're a senior and haven't mentored up until this point I'd spend a good while mentoring people of your own level before you take on juniors.

Another piece of unsolicited advice is to drop any kind of perceptively fake facades; people will very much pick up on if you're git clone --depth=1 around them. Use that time to really invest in and get to know someone, and as the article points out, let them get to know you.

My last piece of advice is be there with them through their trials, especially in the lows. I once had a Marine that was going to get the equivalent of a PIP for behavior and none of the other NCOs wanted to go to our equivalent of HR with him because they knew they'd be dressed down by a man whose very existence was validated by dressing seniors down for their reports behavior. Of course, if a senior wasn't present he'd happily give that tongue-lashing to the junior. Without missing a beat I said I'd go. The worst place you can leave someone on their dark days is alone.

[rented_mule]

I wholeheartedly agree with the advice of getting to know each other deeply and sticking with them through tough times. The most rewarding moments of my career came from mentoring relationships where that played out well (and there is no guarantee that it will with every mentee). Some of those relationships have literally been life changing for me. We all go through painful experiences, but passing on the learning that comes from those experiences gives the experiences deeper meaning, at least for me. I went from feeling pain when thinking about some of those experiences to feeling like they were great investments in my mentees. I only wish I'd done more mentoring earlier.

I retired last year. I've been lucky to have the opportunity to continue mentoring a few of the people I was closest to in the last few years of my career. Those chats are still the highlights of my week. What those relationships look like is deep two-way trust. I trust that they are going to be vulnerable enough to be honest about what they find challenging, that they'll listen to my advice, and they'll think critically about what parts of that advice make sense for them. They trust that I'm going to continue believing in them even when they stumble, that I'm going to be both honest and kind about assessing their successes / failures, and that I'm excited to learn along with them. When that level of trust is reached, the learning for both of us takes off. And it fills me with joy.