What to look for in a formal-ish mentor relationship in the software industry?

Question

I am a senior software engineer working in enterprise SaaS software. I have had informal mentors on previous teams/at previous companies, and I have also been an informal mentor to more junior engineers. At this time, I am the most experienced member on the team, and though I still learn a lot on my own through taking on more responsibility, I feel like my growth has started to plateau due to a lack of a more experienced/senior engineer on my team.

My manager has suggested that I reach out to some of our principal engineers/architects and begin having 1-on-1s with them to develop a more formal relationship. My manager is willing to assist me with this.

What I am unsure of is what my goals should be here. Obviously I want to continue growing and getting better, but I am unsure of how that's going to happen simply through 1-on-1's vs "hands on the keyboard" activities.

Any thoughts on how to establish this kind of relationship in a large company (hundreds of engineers dozens of teams)? What should I be looking to get out of this kind of relationship if it is with someone what I don't normally work with and we work on vastly different parts of a system or even different products?

Answer 1

Any thoughts on how to establish this kind of relationship in a large company (hundreds of engineers dozens of teams)? What should I be looking to get out of this kind of relationship if it is with someone what I don't normally work with and we work on vastly different parts of a system or even different products?

Finding a mentor through outreach is kind of like dating. You have to take the first step to have a conversation and see if there is going to be a personality match. You may do this multiple times before you find a good fit of someone who is willing to support you and put the effort in. As others have mentioned, bringing some ideas for conversation is a great first step. One thing I have found over time is I took the approach about 10 years in to be direct and let people know I was interested in having them as a mentor, and some reasons why. You mentioned being at a plateau, and that in itself in my opinion is the perfect reason to interact with someone outside of your area, for a different perspective. They will likely approach things differently and that can help with growth.

What I am unsure of is what my goals should be here. Obviously I want to continue growing and getting better, but I am unsure of how that's going to happen simply through 1-on-1's vs "hands on the keyboard" activities.

Some of the best mentors for me (I work in infrastructure / security with some coding) have not been the ones who have been hands on teachers, but have been conceptual teachers. An example was a developer I used to go to for advice pointed me at a book, Eloquent Javascript. That book taught me more lessons in practical programming than any hands on answers did, which furthered my career by forcing me to go from simple scripts to re-usable code.

I have some others who are great at helping me get out of my own head and solve problems who aren't in IT (or that savvy with computers overall :) ). Some people I talk with regularly who work on the business side of the products I support have helped me come up with some great projects through their complaints of how things worked (or didn't).

Hopefully some of this can help you with starting the process and finding people who can first start as a sounding board, and then when they figure out how / where they can help they will turn into mentors. My best mentors are those who caused me to answer my own questions or solve my own challenges with nudges.

Good luck!

Answer 2

I'd say growth can be categorized into two buckets:

• You having an interest in something, and figuring out how to do that thing
• The company having a need to do something, and getting someone to fill that need

Hopefully if you are a senior engineer you have at least a few ideas in the first bucket - could be product ideas, technical efficiency improvements, organizational/process improvements, etc.

If so, some questions you might pose to your mentor could be along the lines of:

• I think it would be great if our product did X, what do you think of that idea?
• I would like to change process Y to achieve Z, how would you go about doing that?

I feel like my growth has started to plateau due to a lack of a more experienced/senior engineer on my team

This suggests to me that maybe you are more of an "executor" type than a creative type, which is aligned more closely with the second bucket but does limit you when there aren't more senior employees to provide direction and set goals.

Some questions you might ask to get more ideas could be along the lines of:

• What is the last major project you've designed as an architect? What problem was it solving? What challenges did you run into? What is the benefit to the organization now that the work is complete?
• What do you think our organization is lacking? What are some of the major pain points internally/of our customers?

If your mentor is in a department that is related to you (consumer of your work or producer of work you consume, or lateral collaborator with your department on projects) you can specifically ask how the collaboration between your department and your mentor's department can be improved.

Some general starter question ideas that you can ask if you know nothing about your mentor:

• What is the job of a principal engineer/architect?
• What is expected of a principal engineer/architect?

If you made a good initial impression on your mentor (i.e. you showed up on time and were friendly) these types of questions can easily yield a 15-minute monologue that would give you a lot of information to work with.

Answer 3

As your manager will assist you, how about asking your manager to arrange a port of call with them?

Pick a team which you are most interested in and arrange to spend a couple of hours with a senior member so they can tell you about the project they are working on and what they do in a normal day.