Questions tagged [mentoring]
The mentoring tag has no usage guidance.
83
questions
9
votes
7
answers
2k
views
Explaining to engineers the importance of writing clean code
I've been working in the industry for a bit now and I lead a small team of developers (those are not always the same depending on the project I work on). When writing code I normally receive feedback ...
- 423
1
vote
5
answers
1k
views
I am neither getting mentored nor getting relied upon in the job, I need help on what to do next?
It's my first job for that matter. It has been two months since I joined this job. I am a Linux Systems Administrator but clearly I feel I'm not being mentored as I should. My manager told a senior ...
- 622
8
votes
3
answers
941
views
As my first job, how can I gain the most out of my mentor, a senior engineer?
I am three weeks into my first software engineering job at a software company in Canada working on a windows desktop application in C++. My work consists of fixing newly reported bugs in the software, ...
2
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Dealing with a toxic mentor
The company I work for has a mandatory mentoring program. Every employee is mentored by his line manager. I have meetings with my mentor every two to three weeks. The idea is to talk about areas I ...
- 41
2
votes
4
answers
697
views
How can I let my manager know that I need more guidance on a particular project without making myself look bad?
I am a software engineer who joined a new company about 2 months back. I've been given small tasks here and there and usually was given little to no context. In those tasks, it was easy enough to ...
- 207
7
votes
3
answers
1k
views
How do I tell my manager their teaching method is not effective for me?
I learn best through demonstrations then dissecting the parts and steps to reach the end goal. This is especially important to me with learning coding methods and the like.
However, my manager who has ...
- 79
23
votes
9
answers
12k
views
How can I accommodate all team members during time limited office hours slot?
I have been working in cybersecurity division at my employer for about 8 years and I'm the technical lead / team lead. I have 5 direct reports, with my manager having 9, including me. Our team is a ...
- 20.7k
3
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Helping junior team members grasp abstract concepts in a new IT domain
I work as the team lead on the IT Security team where I work. I have close to 8 years of experience in cybersecurity.
Recently a junior engineer joined my team. He changed IT domains from development ...
- 20.7k
-1
votes
1
answer
336
views
What is the difference between technical coaching and mentoring?
I have seen people using both the terms for similar situations. I do not find much difference between the two. Could someone help me understand the difference between technical coaching vs mentoring ...
- 323
-1
votes
1
answer
391
views
Helping a team member to ramp-up
I work in a startup of 9 people.
It is my first position as a lead developer.
I have started to build my team 9 months ago, we were two for many months and due to a tight deadline we have hired two ...
user102339
3
votes
7
answers
667
views
How to teach and document intuition and experience?
A part of my role as a technical team lead in cybersecurity team at my workplace is to mentor more junior security engineers. While other job roles may have hard rules to follow that almost always ...
- 20.7k
5
votes
2
answers
389
views
Coaching someone outside my own skill set
I was a software developer for twenty years before moving into management. For most of my programming career I did not work with Business Analysts (BAs); in fact the very concept of the position ...
- 9,128
0
votes
1
answer
180
views
Asking former manager to start 1-1 mentoring with me
My former manager left our company a year ago to pursue another opportunity. He was an excellent manager and a great mentor.
I feel like my personal growth is slowing down without his mentorship. I'd ...
- 499
4
votes
3
answers
305
views
What to look for in a formal-ish mentor relationship in the software industry?
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 ...
2
votes
4
answers
1k
views
I've given a very simple coding task but I'm not quite getting what asked, how to be more effective/efficient?
I'm leading a small subproject in my company, and I've never lead any project before in my career and this miniproject according to my manager is supposed to be an exercise on leadership.
I did a task ...
- 423
-3
votes
2
answers
682
views
Change of the hairstyle had dramatic effects on personal relations [closed]
To provide some background I work in tech job which overlaps with academia, think mix of college, software and IT company, I`ve been quite fond of horizontal mobility, flexibility and ability to ...
- 994
18
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Being a good mentor to software developers whose skills are below-par
For the last ten years, I have worked as the only senior developer in a team of 4-5 developers within a larger organisation, supporting a range of corporate systems.
Within the first couple of years, ...
- 293
4
votes
2
answers
545
views
How can I help junior colleagues understand the why of tasks our team does
I work in IT Security as the team lead of the team. I really enjoy mentoring younger, more junior colleagues of team and in the past, my manager has complimented me on how teaching and leadership are ...
- 20.7k
149
votes
16
answers
27k
views
When I need to constructively criticize someone's code, what can I do to "soften the blow" and increase the impact at the same time?
A junior developer was having some issues on a project. As the deadline got closer without any resolution in sight, my manager asked me to help out. I'm a mid-level developer on the team.
After ...
- 6,410
123
votes
14
answers
37k
views
Company does not understand what the “bus factor” is and continues to give me more and more responsibilities
At the company I am working for, I believe is beginning to give me more and more responsibility. Trying to get me to be responsible for more and more pieces of the application and infrastructure we ...
- 45.6k
1
vote
2
answers
387
views
How to keep team morale and efficiency when dealing with poor communication in a mentorship-like relation
I am working in a academia-related field and the type of relationships tend to be pretty much as kind of mentor-students. I have mentored many persons in the past with very nice experiences and ...
- 19
6
votes
2
answers
774
views
Mentoring a new developer to search
I've recently gotten into the position where I am in charge of mentoring a new developer.
While I'm very happy to oblige and and positively influence the career of a younger individual I'm seeing ...
- 171
2
votes
3
answers
472
views
What is the best way to motivate your peers to "go read up about it" vs. explaining them everything at that instant?
We have many cases where colleagues with different experience levels are in a meeting and discussing potential software design(s). And another set of engineers who don't "get it" and would rather ...
- 153
15
votes
5
answers
2k
views
Am I letting my interns down?
I'm a developer tool and infrastructure engineer on a team that looks like so.
Job level(seniority) in the company in parenthesis
Bob(3)/
Me(1)/
Intern-1(0)
Intern-2(0)
Alice(...
- 497
4
votes
2
answers
414
views
Self promotion and its frequency [duplicate]
In a field like IT and software development, tips/help is always given and taken. Helping peers and juniors is expected from an employee in a decent senior position. I am one of such seniors who is ...
- 4,193
3
votes
1
answer
344
views
How to approach a coworker about mentoring
I have recently come to the conclusion that I want to approach manager positions within my current company. We are a large multi-national company, mainly positioned in Europe.
I am considering ...
- 1,789
3
votes
3
answers
772
views
How to help new team member with security best practices without escalation to management
I currently work on the Information Security team at my employer and have been working at my company for about 4 years. Recently a new member joined the team, who per his resume has about 1.5 years of ...
- 20.7k
2
votes
2
answers
448
views
How to politely end a mentoring relationship?
While in my previous job I started what can be seen as an informal mentoring relationship with some junior colleagues. Basically, they asked me for career advice (skills needed, how to acquire them, ...
- 22.9k
1
vote
2
answers
116
views
How to word the concept of "technical knowledge consultant" [closed]
I have a position as a Data Scientist within a very large team (60+ people).
Six of them are business intelligence technicians/data analysts/data scientists/whatever you want to call them.
Career ...
- 21
4
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Have the company dropped the ball with me as a junior developer?
I've recently started my first job as a programmer (I'm currently one month in) at quite a small company and for my first assignment I got paired with a senior developer to work on a minor project, ...
user93954
4
votes
2
answers
282
views
As a mentor, how to interact with the team to adopt my thought processes and suggestions?
I am the Tech Lead of a team. I am usually there for the team's technical challenges, code reviews, quality processes and the like. No one in the team is a direct reportee, all of us report to a ...
4
votes
3
answers
469
views
How to handle mentoring without giving orders?
I work as a system administrator in North America. My team is relatively small, and of our team members, I am the most tenured.
The environment we work in is very complex, and there is no formal ...
- 59
3
votes
1
answer
705
views
Career Advice to move away from QA [closed]
I need a career advice very badly.
About Myself:
I have software test automation (QA) experience for more than 10 years. I am also in a good job with decent salary. However I have been trying to ...
- 133
6
votes
1
answer
741
views
Balancing the problem of teaching junior devs and meeting deadlines
TL;DR: I am having issues maintaining the balance between mentoring junior devs, meeting deadlines as a group, and completing my own work. Read on for more info.
For background, I work at a small, ...
- 71
90
votes
9
answers
22k
views
How to fix a weird relationship at work
I got hired around 6 months ago. But I started to have a difficult relationship with my mentor from the first weeks.
He got interested in me and tried to get close to me and I rejected him for two ...
- 897
3
votes
3
answers
734
views
Bringing junior developer up to speed despite shortage of tasks that can be delegated
I am in the position of Architect/Lead Developer and I have one junior developer on my team.
In the last few months we were delivering projects under tight deadlines so I was struggling to find tasks ...
- 159
2
votes
2
answers
231
views
Focus on Mentorship vs. Execution
I’m currently mentoring a junior engineer. He is indeed smart and driven but lacks the experience to be effective, as is customary for members of this rotation program at our r&d facility.
My ...
- 1,499
-2
votes
1
answer
267
views
How to start managing without the title? [duplicate]
Like many companies, my company has a culture of promoting those who are already doing the job they would be promoted to. As someone who is a lead analyst in a technical position looking to get ...
- 97
3
votes
2
answers
904
views
Considering quitting as a junior due to lack of a coach [closed]
I have finished my CS degree this year and got my first real job in IT, if you don’t count an internship and student jobs.
Since the beginning, I have been basically the only JS developer, ...
- 181
10
votes
3
answers
802
views
Asking a subordinate to mentor you?
I am a team lead in a tech company, and I'd like to know if it's taboo to ask an engineer on the team to mentor me in leadership. This individual does not report to me of course, but I am in a ...
- 111
2
votes
2
answers
246
views
How do I improve on the feedback after a rejection? [closed]
Here is the response from the hiring manager as a feedback:
Thanks for your time. We enjoyed interviewing with you as well, but the team felt some shortcomings in the translation of algorithms to ...
3
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Include mentoring Junior developers and interns in my resume? [closed]
I am a Software Engineer with 4 years experience and I was updating my resume recently. A good part of my current work as a Software Engineer involves mentoring a junior engineer and 2 interns.
Do I ...
- 851
209
votes
10
answers
33k
views
Asking for help in IT in a senior position while keeping credibility
I am working in a senior position in an IT department.
Having learnt a new technology recently and being quite experienced, I rarely, if ever, get stuck on programming matters.
Lately, I have noticed ...
- 1,273
0
votes
1
answer
339
views
How to respond to team member questions when reason is nuanced and depends on experience?
In a way, I am on the opposite side of this question. I work in information security profession as an IT auditor. I was doing peer review of a vulnerabilities report / application risk assessment done ...
- 20.7k
2
votes
3
answers
377
views
Mentor while working remotely? [closed]
I'm going to provide some context below, the question is after this section:
It's been a while since I started to work in my professional field and I have reached a level of knowledge I think is high ...
- 543
2
votes
1
answer
586
views
How to find a good mentor at work?
Note: This question specifically focuses on identifying a mentor in my organization, and therefore is not a duplicate of questions like:
Seeking out a Mentor in field that does not work at the same ...
- 9,660
3
votes
1
answer
667
views
What can I do to make my job more bearable? [closed]
I'm currently working as a software engineer for a small company in the entertainment industry. I graduated from university last August and have been working with the company since during my degree ...
- 296
3
votes
2
answers
2k
views
How can I manage stubborn team mates?
I am part of a group of developers where I am the one person with the most "modern" web development experience. My team members are not totally clueless, the all come from a WPF/SilverLight background....
- 61
10
votes
7
answers
4k
views
How to tell a colleague that he has introduced a massive programming mistake?
We are a small team of developers working on an IT project within a dedicated department. No hierarchy between us in that department, but one common goal: to get our main application up and running. ...
- 463
6
votes
5
answers
1k
views
How to promote autonomy in colleague/subordinate
There is a junior developer (1.5 years of experience) at my company. He is technically very knowledgeable and skilled. However, he is continuously asking for advice, confirmation, etc, to his superior,...
user44928