Becoming the Mentor You Wish You Had: A Guide for Software Engineers

Discover tips and strategies for becoming an effective mentor in the tech industry, offering the guidance and support you once sought as a software engineer.

It’s worth repeating. Mentorship is one of the biggest opportunities for growth, both as a mentor and a mentee (the one being mentored).

As a mentor, you have a lot of power and responsibility.

You can be the difference between…

• Your mentee getting promoted in 1 year vs. 3 years.

• Your mentee staying at the company for 5 years vs. leaving in 1 year with a negative impression.

• Your mentee being excited to come to work every day vs. feeling bored.

How mentorship can affect how fast your goals are reached

Today, we’ll talk about how to be an amazing mentor.

This is part 2 of this series. For part 1, see how to be a good mentee (available for free subscribers until September 6th).

⭐️ Main takeaways

• How to be a mentor your mentee loves to have on their side.

• What a career growth plan looks like and how to make one.

• What you shouldn’t do as a mentor.

📔 (1) Build a career growth plan

A career growth plan is a living document where you and your mentee can…

1. Figure out the most important areas to grow

2. Determine the actions needed to achieve growth

3. Visually represent that growth over time

I’ll share an example career growth plan below, using a small portion of Omar Halabieh’s (Tech Director at Amazon) amazing 90 day career blueprint book. Thank you to Omar for allowing me to share this.

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Career growth plan example

Step 0: Gather inputs such as existing feedback & guidelines on promotion.

• Past feedback states that I could have done better leading my last project. Communication was unclear and could have been more concise.

• Additionally, the technical design required many revisions before getting to a good end state.

• The promotion guidelines state I must be helping to grow at least 2 other engineers before reaching Senior.

Step 1: Assess Your Current and Desired States.

• Current state: L4 Engineer at Meta

• Future state: L5 Engineer at Meta

Step 2: Prioritize 3-5 skills/competencies to focus on.

• Project leadership

• Technical system design

• Grow as a mentor

Step 3: Set a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goal for each focus area.

• Project leadership

  • Lead 3+ month project under the guidance of an L6 engineer. Target finish time by December.

• Technical system design

  • Write technical design for the above project with minimal guidance. Document edge cases, any potential options & a preferred option, and draw a visual flow that is easy to understand. Review with an L5+ engineer before sharing with the team.

• Grow as a mentor by developing other engineers

  • Mentor 2 team members and form a career growth plan with them. Meet and check in regularly on their goals.

Step 5: Identify Dependencies and Support What or who might be key to achieving your goals? Write down any resources, tools, or individuals you might need:

• Ashley (Tech lead - L6): Have a 1:1 with them to discuss opportunities for upcoming large projects.

• Sean (Senior engineer - L5): Review technical design document with Sean.

• Sean (Mentor): Check in every 1 month on career growth plan progress.

• Sahil (Manager): Check in every 2 months on career growth plan progress.

• John & Jill (Mentees): See if they would be open to having me as a mentor.

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I can personally attest to having done a similar career growth plan with my manager—using it was the main driver behind receiving back-to-back promotions.

Doing this with your mentee is an amazing way to figure out growth areas and be aligned on the actions to get to their goals.

🙅‍♂️ (2) Don’t jump straight to answers

Imagine this scenario: You’re in a 1:1, and you’re sharing a 3+ min long, deeply personal story about the stress you’re experiencing with your manager. When you finish, your mentor responds with: “What if you tried…”

🚩🚩🚩 Red flag. Red flag. Red flag.

As a mentor, your advice may be valuable, and it may be what your mentee should start doing, but at that moment, that’s not what they’re looking for.

So what are they looking for? For their feelings to be validated.

• You understand it’s a difficult situation.

• You get why they feel the way they do.

• You’ve been in a similar situation.

In this particular scenario, this is where you should start. Otherwise, your mentee won’t feel like you understand and will probably argue with your advice with things like, “Yeah, but…”

When my mentee is experiencing very difficult challenges, I usually relate as much as possible, then ask, “How can I help?”

Sometimes, their answer may even be: “I just needed to vent.” They didn’t even want or need your advice! You did your job already just by understanding them.

In other cases, they may say, “I really don’t know what to do. Do you have any advice?” Here is where you can give your advice.

💡 (2a) When you give advice

Now, when you give advice, try to avoid telling them what to do directly—at least right away.

Instead, share a relatable personal story. This does 2 important things:

1. It lets them piece together the lessons on their own, which is much more powerful and memorable.

2. It adds to the relatability element from before. They feel like you really understand their situation.

I’ve noticed that when I do this my mentee and I are much more connected. They know that I understand them and are also willing to share more in return.

One caveat: It’s important that as you share, you call out that every situation is unique, and just because you did something one way and it worked doesn’t mean it will for them.

If you don’t have a relatable personal story, that’s ok. One other way to help your mentee is to consider the tradeoffs with them.

I like to say things like, “So if I have this right, it seems like the decision is between X and Y, and the tradeoffs are Z. Based on that, which route would you go with?”

Sometimes they just need to hear the problem restated back to them.

Generally, how you should distribute your responses as a mentor

🤝 (3) Check-in frequently

Meet with your mentee at least every 2 weeks.

Once per month, go over the career growth plan and check in on progress.

• Remember what was top of mind last time. Write it down. Ask about it. It shows you were listening.

• Use the time to do any one of:

  • Catch up on a personal level

  • See how they are doing & feeling. What challenges are top of mind?

  • Working on a problem together or pair programming

  • Exchange feedback. Ask, “In what ways have I been helpful and what things have been less helpful?” “What can I start doing to be more helpful?”

❌ (4) Be careful of coming off as judgmental

If your mentee doesn’t trust you or can’t be vulnerable with you, the relationship isn’t going much further. Both you and your mentee won’t get much out of it.

Here are common mistakes many of us are guilty of:

1. Using “just.”

   1. Example: “Can you just { insert some advice }…”

   2. Why it’s bad: Think about when a teammate says, “Can’t you just implement it X way?” It comes off as condescending and non-empathetic.

2. Questioning in an interrogative way

   1. Example: “Why don’t you do it this way?” or “Why haven’t you tried this?”

   2. This is bad for similar reasons to “just.”

3. Being too prescriptive—in any form of advice or help

   1. Example: You and your mentee are pairing on a technical design. They bring up suggestions but you constantly shoot them down in favor of your way of doing things.

   2. In the example above, try to find a balance between “best practices” and incorporating the essence of what your mentee wants to do. For more advice on this, I’ll do an article on “yes and” in the future. Stay tuned.

🙌 (5) Compliment often

Think about when you receive a compliment from your manager or someone you deeply respect. It lights you up.

That’s how your mentee feels when you give them compliments.

Not only that, but it helps them realize what their strengths are and gives them the confidence to take on more.

The main thing here is not forgetting to do this.

📖 TL;DR

This isn’t an all-encompassing list, but doing each of these is going to create a rock-solid relationship with your mentee and put their growth on superspeed.

1. Build a career growth plan with your mentee.

   1. Why: This will help you and your mentee make consistent progress toward goals. The growth will be seen visually too as you cross items off.

2. Avoid giving advice instantly. Instead, do things in this order…

   1. Share how you understand and relate to them.

   2. Share a personal, relatable story with lessons inside.

   3. Help evaluate tradeoffs, then let your mentee decide.

   4. Finally, if your mentee is really unsure or there are things they are not considering, give your advice.

3. Meet on a cadence, at least bi-weekly.

   1. Why: You can catch up, pair program, talk through decisions, exchange feedback, and work toward goals.

4. Watch out for coming off as judgmental.

   1. Why: This can cause serious harm to the relationship and prevent it from being valuable.

5. Compliment often.

   1. Why: This helps your mentee gain confidence, understand their strengths, and improves the bond between you.

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📣 Announcement

Before closing out, I wanted to share that I’m opening up a few more slots on Mentorcruise. Get in quick before they’re booked!

Check it out here if you’re interested in mentorship from me directly.

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As always, thank you for reading.

- Jordan

P.S. You can reply to this email; it will get to me, and I will read it even if I can’t always reply in a timely manner.

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