So You Want to be a Mentor?

The following article is taken from Getting to Staff, a weekly newsletter from Thinksy's CTO Eden Ghirmai.

So You Want to be a Mentor?

How to support your teammates

It’s 2023 so formal apprenticeships don’t really exist anymore (unless you’re trying to be a blacksmith or something). You can’t just go up to another engineer and ask if they can be your mentor.

Same goes for the other way around, you can’t expect people to just ask you to mentor them so you can check off being a mentor on your career packet.

So, how do you become a mentor?

Honestly, it’s really simple. Help people. Answer questions across Slack (even if it’s not your responsibility), share your successful promotion packets with others, reach out and schedule 1:1s with people who are new, provide feedback on PRs outside your expertise, help the overloaded on-call engineer when they are working alone on a stressful incident.

How do I start?

As usual, here are some things you can take action on today.

• Answer a question in a public slack channel outside your team.

  • Maybe you’re more familiar with load testing, database alters, etc. and can help someone with a question.

• Reach out to someone more junior on your team and ask if they’d want to have reoccurring 1:1s

  • Use this time to just ask them questions and listen to their concerns/ideas

• Introduce yourself to someone who recently joined on your pillar (regardless of role) and let them know you’re here to support them if they want any help with onboarding

Now let’s get them promos,

Eden