Overcoming the Challenges of Mentoring
This is a modal window.
The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.
Formal Metadata
| Title |
| |
| Title of Series | ||
| Part Number | 42 | |
| Number of Parts | 48 | |
| Author | ||
| Contributors | ||
| License | CC Attribution - ShareAlike 3.0 Unported: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal and non-commercial purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor and the work or content is shared also in adapted form only under the conditions of this | |
| Identifiers | 10.5446/33203 (DOI) | |
| Publisher | ||
| Release Date | ||
| Language |
Content Metadata
| Subject Area | ||
| Genre | ||
| Abstract |
|
DjangoCon US 201742 / 48
2
5
6
14
16
23
26
30
31
32
34
39
43
48
00:00
Process (computing)RankingSocial classForm (programming)CodeSoftwareSoftware developerStatement (computer science)Vector potentialVideoconferencingBridging (networking)Context awarenessExecution unitQuery languageMachine visionStatement (computer science)Perturbation theoryProgram slicingArithmetic meanMultiplication signBlogTheoryHypothesisSoftware testingWordLevel (video gaming)WebsiteStrategy gameGroup actionComputer fileGoogolComputer programmingAreaSocial classProcess (computing)Dependent and independent variablesModal logicSystem callCylinder (geometry)Point (geometry)Field (computer science)FreewareCone penetration testNumberCodeLine (geometry)Rule of inferenceFormal languageGradientGodService (economics)FrequencySelectivity (electronic)Game theoryTraffic reportingTwitterPerspective (visual)Inclusion mapSoftware developerState of matterSpacetimeInheritance (object-oriented programming)Real numberData storage deviceWeightMessage passingPlanningWave packetNP-hardFigurate numberAlgebraic closureSlide ruleComputer animation
09:02
Computer programSoftware developerMaxima and minimaLimit (category theory)Menu (computing)Dean numberDynamic random-access memoryTwin primeHill differential equationData miningStack (abstract data type)Shared memoryRule of inferenceCartesian coordinate systemBuffer overflowStrategy gameWeb pageComputer programmingLatent heatCodeObject (grammar)WebsiteSoftware developerSocial classDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Process (computing)Focus (optics)MereologyCommitment schemeMultiplication signWeb 2.0Expert systemPersonal digital assistantMathematicsLine (geometry)GoogolFunctional (mathematics)Endliche ModelltheorieVideo gameAnalogyBootingSubsetMathematical analysisOnline helpRing (mathematics)Variable (mathematics)FamilySatelliteSet (mathematics)System callHeat transferUniverse (mathematics)WordGodMatching (graph theory)NumberData managementSelectivity (electronic)Software maintenanceComputer animation
18:04
Process (computing)NP-hardSoftware developerArchaeological field surveyLevel (video gaming)Range (statistics)CodeInterior (topology)Electronic mailing listWordNumberComputer programmingWritingSoftware developerProjective planeState of matterArchaeological field surveyAlgorithmCodeFormal languageProcess (computing)WebsiteTablet computerPlotterSolid geometryGraph coloringMereologyMaizeFigurate numberQuicksortPlastikkarteData conversionFood energySource codeMultiplication signPole (complex analysis)Web-DesignerCommitment schemeMarginal distributionComputer scienceBoundary value problemError messageCycle (graph theory)Endliche ModelltheorieFunction (mathematics)Arithmetic meanView (database)CuboidLevel (video gaming)Lattice (order)System callEvent horizonSlide ruleMessage passingControl flowResultantImage resolutionInformationDegree (graph theory)Position operatorMoving averageStack (abstract data type)Buffer overflowSound effectFitness functionWeb 2.0CAN busFreewareScheduling (computing)Online helpBootingUML
27:06
Position operatorXML
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:01
Get all this stuff out of the way. Please tweet. I need people to know that I exist.
00:37
So Kim Creighton One, that is my main Twitter. We'll be talking about Junior
00:41
Dev Mentoring, which is my mentoring website and Slack team. We also have Community Engineering Report, which is my new podcast that talks about community, diversity, community, and safe spaces in tech from an economic standpoint. I'm not going to argue with you about your politics. I'm not going to argue
01:03
with you about your morals. It's about your bottom dollar. So if you want to be able to compete, you need to have diverse perspectives and inclusivity on your teams. I do a training that helps people transition in tech, so I'm using the hashtag, Taming the Wild West, because this is what this is. There is no path to this. It is Taming the Wild West. And because of all the
01:23
crap I see on Twitter and whatnot, I've just started just putting out, the hashtag, We Can Do Better. I don't even respond. It's just hashtag, We Can Do Better. That's how I roll. I am a community engineer, and if you don't know what that is, I was speaking at a Closure West conference, and one of the
01:42
attendees came down, and he said, I have a name for you, because at the time I was like trying to figure out, is that me? What am I doing? Okay. All right. So he said, we're engineers. You're a community engineer. I was like, that sounds good. So I went to
02:04
research the words. I am a researcher, so words mean something to me. So community engineer to me is that person. So community is that heart stuff, the H-E-A-R-T. That's the mission. That's the stuff that makes people feel really, really good. But it usually gets you nowhere. It's the engineering that you
02:26
need to make the heart stuff work. It's the operationalizing your mission, your vision, your goals. That's where people make a mistake. So they'll put their vision and their mission statements on their website, but just because you put it there, that doesn't mean anything. So that's what a
02:42
community engineer is, and I added this to my slides today, because I am transitioning. I am in the last few months of my doctoral program. I am, thank you for those who clap. I am, my thesis, so a doctoral program is different from a PhD program. I have a DBA, because PhD is theory. I'm all about
03:05
practical. I'm not trying to test theories. I'm trying to put theories into play. So my topic is successful strategies for increasing organizational knowledge sharing through mentoring junior developers. That's what my topic is about, and so I'm class of 2018. My story started August 14,
03:27
August 2014. It started before then, but it started with, I've always been a tech person. I was the person who would go to, would watch the Apple keynote, not
03:41
just to see what was coming out next, but to see why did they put that button there, why didn't they do that, and they always had a reason. Other people didn't like it sometimes, but who cares, but at least they gave me a reason. It would drain battery life, it did this, it did that, and those are the things that are important to me. So if I had to build a website, I mean I just went to YouTube, followed, found something, Google, WordPress, found some good
04:02
things, and just it took me days because I had to stop and do, and stop and do, but that was the kind of techie I was. I never saw myself as a producer of tech, but I was more than a consumer of tech. In 2014, as an only child, my worst fear came. I thought the death of a parent would really just knock
04:22
me out, and my father and I lived together, and so he died of cancer in 2014, but I didn't die, and so it led me to think, let me back up. I was an educator. I was a high school teacher. I don't like your kids. I don't like
04:44
your kids. I really don't like your kids, and it's a part, most of it is because you can tell them how special they are, and they're really not. They're special to you, and you really need to get them ready for the real world, because everyone wants to complain about Millennials, but you got them believing
05:01
that they're so freaking special, and so they have this false idea, but I don't like your kids. Okay, so after that, I was like, I didn't die. I'm gonna, I don't like these kids, so I'm gonna leave, so I went away to, okay, my clicker's not working, so I went
05:20
away to Maui for a week. Yeah, exactly. I went away to Maui for a week, and as I was crying and snotting and surfing and snotting and crying, and I had an epiphany. I said, screw this. I'm going into tech, so I sent back a text message to the people who would care, and I said, I'm going into tech, and yes, I put it
05:43
in quotes, because I said, when I figure that out, I'll let you know. That's what it meant to me. I had no plan. Again, this is the one. I had no idea what I was doing, so when I came back home, this is gonna be interesting, so when I came back home, I
06:01
ended up immediately going to workshops and conferences and meetups in Atlanta. I mean, Atlanta's a thriving community, so for the first six months, I was like a kid in the candy store. I was like, UXUI. What? Oh, I didn't know that thing had a name in the net of things. Oh, that thing has a name, because I was
06:22
playing around. I mean, I knew about connected technology. I knew, but I never, I was putting names on things. I was just like in awe the first six months, and so I believe the, so also I was, for the first time, being black female in the South was working for me. I mean, I was rocking it. I was getting, yes, girl, I was
06:40
getting free tickets to everything. I wasn't paying for anything. I was going to conferences. I went to my first JavaScript conference, didn't even know what JavaScript was. I was just sitting there, like at some point, some of this is gonna make sense. It really didn't, but I was there anyway, and so I was like, okay, and so I was going, I was just doing all kinds of things, because you got some free check-check. Yeah, I mean, I was just
07:09
going for it, so it was like, I just felt like a superhero. I was like, yes, you got something for free. Get this way. So that's what I did, until people kept
07:21
saying, oh, coding is not easy, which led me to write this blog post. Stop
07:45
lying to newbies. Just stop doing it. You're doing them a disservice. You're doing the industry a disservice, because this shit's hard. Learning is hard, period. Learning a language is even harder, and so we, and you devalue
08:04
what you do when you tell people that this is easy. Maybe you forgot what it was like when you first started, but this shit's hard. People, we need to stop doing it for the reasons that we need people in the industry. There are jobs
08:22
everywhere. You know, you hear this mantra, oh my god, there's so many jobs, and we can't find qualified people to fill them. Oh my god, there's so many jobs, we can't come, it's like, oh my god, it's like, shut up already, we heard you. There's so many jobs, you can't find people to fill them. What are you gonna do about it, besides wine? The challenge is not the number of newbies that are coming in the
08:48
field, it's the number of newbies who stay in the field. That's the problem. We don't have a great way of helping people acclimate to this, this Wild West. There is no path. If you do this at every talk, can you raise your hand if
09:02
you think of any industry where you get hired and you're not supposed to be a professional when you're hired? You're not supposed to be an expert. Just don't think I could think of. Not only are you, not only supposed to be an expert when you're hired, but you can't make mistakes because that's unreliable. So even when you're a custodian, they expect you to know how
09:23
to mop when you get the job, but this is a thing that is just so, you know, I want to make this thing, it's never been made before, I know a few lines of code, let's figure this out, let's Google it, let's stack overflow it, whatever. You're hired not to be an expert in whatever this thing they may need you to create. So that's, that's overwhelming for a lot of people,
09:44
particularly career changes where you've had to be an expert your whole life, and I have particular problems with some of these resources here, and I'll just bootcamps. I have a problem with bootcamps, and I'm happy that some of them are closing
10:02
down because if I pay $15,000 for a course, there is no child left behind. You're going to figure out how to make this work for me, and the reason that that model is not working, because it only works for a subset of people. It works for people who have some kind of technical engineering background who
10:21
are looking to be focused and can handle a 12-week, 16-week, whatever accelerated program, but it's because it's not enough of those people, they start bringing the marketing and sales people to reach out to people who don't even know what a variable is, and there is no way a person who doesn't know what a variable function is on day one is going to do well in a 12-week
10:42
accelerated class where every two days they're learning something new. It's not going to happen, so you've just wasted their money, and most times you require them to leave their jobs and do this thing full-time, and I find that a great disservice. You need to be definitely put out of business for that, and again the developer community is all so overwhelmingly generous, so you
11:05
have this pool of people who need your help, and you have this pool of people who are willing to help. They just don't know really how to help because they see mentoring as this overwhelming thing, and again the researcher in me, this
11:20
is the research that I've collected myself. Business costs associated with corporate hiring managers, inability to recruit and retain skilled workers to fill current jobs is only increasing. The fast pace and uncertainty of today's economic climate have business leaders turning to
11:40
mentoring as a strategy for increasing organizational knowledge or knowledge sharing, and organizational leaders have reported, and this is a big number, that ineffective employee mentoring and inadequate knowledge sharing is costing $31.5 billion per year. Now if that
12:02
doesn't hit you in the pocket, I don't know what does. So this is not a moral issue. It's not a political issue. It's a business issue. It's costing businesses money. So what we're going to talk about is, I like to break this down into four quadrants. We're talking about the differences between personal
12:20
and professional mentoring, and youth and adult mentoring. So we're going to, so those are the quadrants, and we're going to start with the youth. Mentoring youth is focused on them. When I'm mentoring a young person, somebody under 18 years old, it's not about Kim. It's about making sure I provide that person with the skills that they need to become a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen. Hopefully happy. That is my goal. What I
12:45
find is, when I take on that person, when I take them home, now I need to mentor these nuts at the house, because this explains why this person is acting this way. So that's a lot to take on, and it's personal. You know, you end up going to people's graduations, and going to people's
13:04
birthday parties, and just being with the family, and you're just like, God, I don't want to be with you, but you have to do this for this young person. Adult mentoring is different. Adult mentoring is usually focused on a specific career thing they're trying to accomplish. So it's
13:23
not this nebulous, ongoing thing. It's something specific. It's focusing on making them better at doing something, and it's, you know, acquiring knowledge and skills, best practice. It's mutually beneficial. I don't have to go to Thanksgiving dinner with you, but I do at least have to like you. Mentoring,
13:42
that doesn't, I have mentored some people, and I'm just like, Lord. But because it was about them, I had to suck it up. But if it's another adult and I don't like you, deuces. I'm out of here. And so that's what that is, and adults can be in the role of mentor, mentee, or both. You see that when
14:04
people are learning. I might have this skill, so I'm gonna help you with this, but I don't have this skill, so can you help me with that? So it goes back and forth. We talked about that personal mentoring. That's that whole, oh come over and meet my grandma. It's her 70th birthday. Then you're thinking about,
14:22
what am I bringing this gift to this woman I've never met, that, you know, just all this stuff. Not with professional mentoring. It's, the best mentoring to me is an apprenticeship program. It's where you bring people in. And we have the history of that. We have tons of research. I mean,
14:42
apprenticeship programs are, I mean, from the Middle Ages and beyond. I mean, these are things that we know how to do. We need to apply them to development because they're defined goals and objectives. Again, that's the engineering part. How do you take tacit knowledge from someone
15:02
who knows it, and tacit knowledge is that learned experience, which is different from explicit knowledge. So you want to take that knowledge that someone has because they learned it and experience it. How do you transfer that to someone else? That's what, that's the challenge. But if you have
15:20
identified goals and objectives, it's easier. So we're gonna focus on, I'm gonna stop. It's not easier. It's less challenging. It's gonna be done. I don't like that word. All right, so we're gonna focus on adult and professional. Talking about what mentoring is not. Mentoring is not Stack Overflow. Mentoring is not Slack. Stack Overflow and Slack is like, when my house is burning, please put it
15:44
out. Particularly for a newbie who does not know what they're doing, everything is a fire that needs to be put out. So you need to think about that when you're on, when you're providing assistance. First of all, don't be jerks on Stack Overflow. If this is a question that they've asked, that
16:00
somebody asked before, just direct them to, you don't have to be snipey about, this isn't appropriate. There are no rules when you come to Stack Overflow because most people have Googled it. So that's my issue with Stack Overflow. For all you, if I'm offending you, I don't care. So all you people who have, who are Stack Overflow guards, if there was a, when I Googled it,
16:28
it sent me to a page with some rules, then I would say fine. But since it takes me directly to the answer I'm looking for and it might not have it, then you need to get off these people's back because they don't know what that is. They've been told to Google, they don't know that there are
16:41
rules on Stack Overflow. Also, when you're doing this, what I had many times, somebody's working with me. I've chopped up my whole code base. I'm just, they're trying to, and then they die. I don't know where they went. I don't know if they got off work. I don't know what they just leave. They don't say goodbye. They don't say I'm leaving. They don't say nothing. You're just sitting there with now this code that you don't understand
17:02
because they made you change it and you just got to, hopefully you use Git so you can roll back something. But the check, yeah exactly, but a newbie using Git? Come on! What? No. So they have to start over and they have no idea what they're doing. So Stack Overflow and Slack, that's the
17:21
fire. My house is on fire. Please help me. And there, mentoring changes. So what mentoring is is a relationship. That's one of the reasons I built Junior Dev Mentoring. It was a website where people can make a commitment for a year to mentor or mentor someone. What I found was a
17:42
challenge was people, again this, people don't know how to ask for mentoring. They don't know how to get. I have people coming up to me, Kim, where you mentoring? Who the hell you are? So you're asking me to give my time. You have no defined goals. What do you want to do with web development? Do you know
18:04
how broad that is? It's like no, that's no, no. So I started the Slack channel that is very active. It's to allow people to get on there and put out fires while building relationships. So then they can get a mentor and then they can move to the website and make a commitment. Because people were having
18:23
trouble figuring out how to build relationships. You know, people go to this whole going to meetups and passing out cards. That just, I am an introvert and that just gets on my nerves. Don't hand me your card. I'm going in the garbage can. Don't know who you are. I've connected nothing to you. We need to have a meaningful conversation or something for me to connect who and what
18:42
you are and what matters to me. And if what you're doing fits in what I want to do. So it's a relationship. And like any relationship that you value, I don't know about your personal life, but I'm sure there's one relationship that you value. You put in time. You respect the boundaries. If you're not going to be there, you say, hey, I need to reschedule. You don't just drop the ball. You
19:01
don't just ignore people. Even on the mentee side, when there's work to be done, you do it. You get it done. You don't waste people's time. And it's a commitment. It's like, it could be, it could be as short as, you know what, I'm going to mentor you on this thing for, I have, let's say, I have six months, six weeks I know a big project's coming up. Give me, tell me something you're
19:23
working on so I can see if this fits in my schedule and then I can work around how we can do that. That's how adult mentoring works. And it's personally, professionally transformational. Because I can tell you, I know very few newbies who get junior developer jobs without somebody stepping in and helping them out because they don't even know where the pitfall is. It's like you're just walking on, go ahead, clap baby, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, people need to know from these newbies.
19:47
They're, I mean, it's like you're forever walking on, on minefields. You're just woof, woof, and you're like woof. It's like ridiculous. You don't know a thing that's going on. Your face is getting blown off. You're, oh, you have no limbs. You're just walking around like this and everybody's like, you look
20:01
weird. Yeah, because nobody will help me, you know. It's like, step in and help. But you don't know how to do it, so I get it. This is why you should do it. Mentoring, the role of mentoring, you need to understand that it's vocational support, you're providing psychosocial support, role modeling. And I'm gonna,
20:25
a caveat, if you don't like people, please stay away from newbies. A bad mentor is worse than having no mentor at all. I'm gonna repeat that because some of you will not hear it. A bad mentor is having no mentor at all.
20:41
Evaluate your motivation, honest assessment of your time, your talent, and your temperament. Realistic, set realistic goals, and give them examples. And for the mentee, reciprocity, respect the relationship, and identify goals. Okay, mentees have no idea what a
21:02
realistic goal is because people have lied to them so much about how easy this is. They think they can go to the moon tomorrow. They have no idea. So it takes somebody to come in and say, hey, no, you can't get to the moon, but you're not gonna get there tomorrow. We can, you know, step by step. And then we say why, reasons why development community needs mentoring. We talked
21:21
about all those things. Mentor, it's all about economics. People need to be able to level up. And positive mentoring relationships, for those people who think they're bringing in a mentee and they're gonna leave, if you have a positive culture that supports positive mentoring, newbies will not leave. They will appreciate what you've done for them and they will stay
21:45
longer then because who wants to go to another job you don't know what that is and it might be even worse. So think about that. Impostor syndrome is my pet peeve. Newbies do not have impostor syndrome. You don't know shit, you can't be, you can't be an impostor. Impostor
22:03
syndrome or for people who have skills who still doubt their skills, but if you don't know anything you can't have impostor syndrome. You wouldn't tell a baby, oh you have impostor syndrome because you can't roll over. I mean that's just absurd. They just don't know. You don't know a variable. It's not like you're making, I'm not joking, I don't know what this thing is. So if
22:23
you see any young newbie saying that they have impostor syndrome because everybody wants to have this label for some reason, please correct them. They do not have impostor syndrome. How much time do I have? Okay, because we started late. Okay, well, my, no, yeah, exactly, um, we
22:45
started a little late, so okay, that is it. I have the slides because there's some other stuff on here, so thank you. So the cool thing is, Kim, because
23:00
you book into a break, we can definitely talk about your developer survey results. Okay, so it's break time, but let's just do it. Let's go for it. All right, so this is from Stack Overflow because I mean they have great information and this is what people need to understand. It's a misconception that most people have CS degrees. When you go to get a computer
23:23
science degree, they're teaching you a different skill. You're learning how to solve problems algorithmically, so they're using Python or whatever they're using to solve problems. They're not, the language they're using is for them like writing a, using a pencil. You're not the pencil. You're not, I don't know
23:40
how to make a pencil. I use pencil to write stuff down, so that's why they're using code. So that's why a lot of CS people come out and they don't know how to code either because that's not the skills they're focusing on, but most people are self-taught, and so we need to, employers need to understand that that's what it is. Most people are self-taught, and most people have less than eight years experience, but if you look at it, most people have less than three years experience, and as you know,
24:04
it takes between, I would say, two years solid of somebody working with something to really say they can develop their coder. I really would because they, you're being hired as a developer to solve problems, and a newbie you can't solve problems. You can, somebody can give you some code and
24:20
you can fix it if it's broken, but no one can get, the chances of someone giving you a blank slate and saying this is the problem, solve it. It's very slim if you're a newbie. So that takes about, again, that's that tacit knowledge. You have to do some things, build some muscle to be able to get that. So people are saying, you know, a formal education is not very important because we, as we see, there's a lot of free stuff out there. So most, 90% of
24:44
people are self-taught. I don't know how they got to 125% on this, but 125% of people have been through mentoring programs, and that has made them successful. So if 125%, which is over 100, but people say that that's what's successful, why aren't we doing this more? It doesn't make sense. Why
25:02
aren't we doing this more? And so I say use project-based learning. So I'm gonna give you an example of how to use this as a project-based learning. So someone says, I'm just gonna say web development. It's too broad, but we're just gonna use this as an example. So we already know, so somebody to be an effective developer of web development, they need to know CSS, HTML, and
25:23
So what I would do is say, hey, project-based learning. Here's a document that has some text on it. We're just gonna start with HTML, put some tags on it, and then they have to come back to me and explain why they use those tags as opposed to other tags, because that lets me know what they've learned, do they understand how the tags are used. Then I would say, okay, now add
25:42
some color to the background, or some other stuff. So now I'm bringing in CSS, but because it's learning, you take two steps forward, you're gonna take ten steps back, they're not gonna remember all the tags. So that's why they need the time, so they need to, that's why I don't like boot camps, because you don't get the time to, trying to figure, you're just doing this a lot, and you just don't know what's going on. So then they add some color, and
26:03
then you say, whoo, let's use the box method, whoo, but that right there just just totally demoralizes a lot of people, because now you got to deal with margins and figure out if what's, if this margin is this padding, is this what, I don't know what this thing is, so you do that thing. Then once they make it, then you say, hey, let's add a click event, that's it. You don't, just
26:22
give them a whole project and just say, you just add, you keep, it's called scaffolding, you just keep adding to it. So what I need you to do is, that box that we just did, let's make, let's make that a button. And so then they go into the job, you know, they learn a little JavaScript, and then they make that a click event, and then, oh, and then you just keep adding on to that. That's how you do, make the mentoring very, make it manageable, you make it
26:45
measurable, and people know. It's very objective, it's not subjective. And this is where I usually do an assessment, but we don't have time, I'll take any questions later, but thank you again. If you would like to get involved, this
27:05
is how you get involved.