I wound up in the role of a mentor somewhat unintentionally. I'd been planning to start an internship program through my company, but I was originally afraid I'd have nothing to offer. It was my computer science professor who assured me that I already knew plenty enough to mentor, and I'd learn the rest on the way.
I've learned that there are really only two rules about whether you're ready to be a mentor:
You can only take people as far as you yourself have gone.
If you keep learning more, you'll always be at least one step ahead.
Starting out, I knew how to write production-quality code and complete a project by a deadline, but that was about it. I learned a lot through mentoring...at least as much as my interns did!...and I made a lot of mistakes along the way. The trick was, I was willing to admit to my interns when I made a mistake, to listen to feedback, and to continually grow as a leader. As long as you learn from your mistakes, you can only grow in your leadership and mentoring skills.
I think Doctor Who (11th, if you're keeping track) unintentionally sums up the primary secret to leadership when he says to his companions...
Have you recorded what you have learned in some type of ASK system or ExTRA (Experts Telling Relevant Advice) system that junior programmers and developers could consult when they need help after office hours?
I'm looking for something better than YouTube subscriptions to numerous videos I am not interested in at the moment. socraticarts.com/solutions/technol...
I share most of my insights in my articles here on DEV, so I'd recommend through my profile.
In-house, we use Phabricator Ponder (which functions like a mini-StackOverflow) for asking and answering questions. I try to encourage interns to use that instead of email when they have a question, so the answers are available to other (and future) interns. There's not as much information on there as I'd like, but we're working on it.
We also maintain extensive documentation of our processes and workflows, including detailed setup and debugging instructions.
I'm not sure what you mean. In the context of DEV alone, one could probably browse my profile and search for specific tags, and some of my articles are series with proper topic lists, but I never intended my articles to be any sort of properly-indexed reference guide.
If you're talking about, in the context of my own interns, I do maintain an internal wiki page with a number of articles, some of them mine, organized by topic.
Of course, I don't really consider my own writing to be that important. I'd rather students and interns learn how to use search tools and do their own research. DEV's tags and search bar are quite good for that.
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I wound up in the role of a mentor somewhat unintentionally. I'd been planning to start an internship program through my company, but I was originally afraid I'd have nothing to offer. It was my computer science professor who assured me that I already knew plenty enough to mentor, and I'd learn the rest on the way.
I've learned that there are really only two rules about whether you're ready to be a mentor:
You can only take people as far as you yourself have gone.
If you keep learning more, you'll always be at least one step ahead.
Starting out, I knew how to write production-quality code and complete a project by a deadline, but that was about it. I learned a lot through mentoring...at least as much as my interns did!...and I made a lot of mistakes along the way. The trick was, I was willing to admit to my interns when I made a mistake, to listen to feedback, and to continually grow as a leader. As long as you learn from your mistakes, you can only grow in your leadership and mentoring skills.
I think Doctor Who (11th, if you're keeping track) unintentionally sums up the primary secret to leadership when he says to his companions...
It works out surprisingly well.
Have you recorded what you have learned in some type of ASK system or ExTRA (Experts Telling Relevant Advice) system that junior programmers and developers could consult when they need help after office hours?
I'm looking for something better than YouTube subscriptions to numerous videos I am not interested in at the moment. socraticarts.com/solutions/technol...
I share most of my insights in my articles here on DEV, so I'd recommend through my profile.
In-house, we use Phabricator Ponder (which functions like a mini-StackOverflow) for asking and answering questions. I try to encourage interns to use that instead of email when they have a question, so the answers are available to other (and future) interns. There's not as much information on there as I'd like, but we're working on it.
We also maintain extensive documentation of our processes and workflows, including detailed setup and debugging instructions.
Would you say that your articles are well indexed on DEV? Can students easily find the specific information or advice you give that they need ASAP?
I'm not sure what you mean. In the context of DEV alone, one could probably browse my profile and search for specific tags, and some of my articles are series with proper topic lists, but I never intended my articles to be any sort of properly-indexed reference guide.
If you're talking about, in the context of my own interns, I do maintain an internal wiki page with a number of articles, some of them mine, organized by topic.
Of course, I don't really consider my own writing to be that important. I'd rather students and interns learn how to use search tools and do their own research. DEV's tags and search bar are quite good for that.