Mentorship: The Way Forward

#devrel #mentorship #productivity #career

Starting as a Developer was hell for me, all kinds of things happened, had the worst road map a man could ever have till I found an uncle who was miraculously a developer turned founder of a payment platform based in 3 countries. I was excited, I spent 6 months with him, in the first 3 month's I didn’t write a single line of code, all the though I was how to find whatever solution I needed using Google and if i do not understand what I read, I move on to watching a tutorial over YouTube, this was 8 years ago.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own." - Benjamin Disraeli

Start asking the right way

I see a lot of developers starting who have zero ideas whatsoever on how to get started, what to get started with, they require guidance, I receive a lot of DM's about mentorship, "I am starting with a, b & c, but I'm confused how to start, could you become my mentor?"

When I see this kind of questions, I and I see them a lot, In most scenarios, I say I can’t help because this person in the context need's a mentor and that is a lot of work to commit to with all the things I already do

How do I ask the right way?

Stop asking this:

I am starting with a, b & c, but I'm confused about how to get started, could you become my mentor?

instead, ask

I am starting with a, b & c, but I'm confused about how to get started, are there resources in links you could share with me?

The word mentorship hit's differently on people who have a tight schedule, and if you keep saying, can you become or can you mentor me, their schedule and time left in 24 hours hit's them differently, so you either get a "No" or zero response, but instead what you should do is ask a very straight forward question that the person in context could send in a response as soon as possible, here is an example conversation between Ayo & James

James: Hi Ayo, I've always wanted to become a developer but I'm a bit lost and have I no idea how to get started, can you help with sending in a couple of videos or articles that can help guide my journey?

Ayo: Hey James, sorry for the late response, sure I'll be happy to, here are some links, if you have any more questions you can definitely hit me up. Good Luck with your learning James!

Above is a simple and straightforward conversation with James a developer looking to start his journey into becoming a developer and Ayo a developer with professional years of experience.

Result

Finally, what's most important is the results you have achieved while learning from the resources given to you, if you spoke to a developer with far more experience than yourself and the developer in this context shared a couple of resources with you, in the next conversation of you asking more questions you should include a link, Probably GitHub or a dribbble shot if a designer with what you have built or designed recently, then you can add the next question.

Sharing your progress with the experienced person in context helps give the person a solid picture of how serious you are and if you would appreciate the time given to you, You'll get a much faster response and far more support than the last time.

Thanks for reading this blog post, I hope that I could bring some light into how to find and approach a developer who has more experience than you and less time to spend in a day.

I will be posting more contents in the coming weeks, feel free to follow me here and on my twitter: @developerayo :)

looking forward to hearing your thoughts after reading this article below in the comment section or over Twitter 🔥