From bar-back to frontender

Ryan Burgess
Welcome to the 25th episode of the front end, happy hour, we had a request from one of our listeners to do an episode on mentorship, and share our thoughts on having a mentor as we learn and grow. So in this episode, we talk about starting out as a junior developer and how mentors have helped us shape into senior developers. Let's go around the table and give brief introductions of today's episodes. Panelists. Stacy, do you want to start it off?

Stacy London
Sure. I'm Stacy London. I'm a front end dev at Atlassian.

Derrick Showers
My name is Derek showers. I'm a senior software engineer at LinkedIn.

Sarah Showers
My name is Sarah showers. I am a software engineer at LinkedIn minus the senior

Ryan Burgess
minus the senior. So then you'll be sharing good mentorship about growing into a senior Sure, well, great. And I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a software engineering manager at Netflix. In each episode of the front end, Happy Hour podcast, we all like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned at all, we will all take a drink. What did we decide today's keyword is learning? Learning. So if we say the word learning at all, we will all take a drink. Alright, let's get started. I'd like to start off by saying Did you have a mentor throughout your career? Does anyone actually had a mentor? I

Sarah Showers
don't think I've ever officially had somebody that was assigned to me as a mentor. But there's definitely a lot of people that I've met and have relationships with that I would classify as mentors for sure.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I feel the same way. I don't think I've actually asked someone Hey, will you be my mentor? I've definitely have a lot of colleagues throughout my career that I consider mentors. And I've learned a ton from cheers. I've already said the word learn. But yeah, I've, you know, grown by just using them bouncing ideas off them. I've also found that it even had managers or people in leadership roles that have really helped me throughout my career.

Stacy London
Yeah, I don't think insane. I've never actually like asked somebody to be my mentor had anybody be like that in official capacity in any way. But it's similar thing where I've had someone that I've worked with that has decided that they would be more helpful to me or more open to me asking questions, and comfortable with that, and not like, you know, irritated if I asked too many questions, that kind of person like that, that just has happened several times over my career, which has been really, really helpful. I've seen

Ryan Burgess
about bosses or managers that have been really great mentors, and really helped me, I've also on the flip side had managers that have just been so horrible that I've either moved to different departments in the company, or left the company, or luckily, that manager was either let go, or they left. But there has been times where it's been actually detrimental to my career where I don't feel like I'm growing. So I think it is important to have the right people in your career.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, I think it's also important to, I actually don't know if I do a really good job at this, but in theory I want to, is to reach out to people and you know, again, you don't have to ask them to be your mentor, but to reach out to people that you don't work with on a daily basis, because I think that's kind of the natural tendency is everyone. A lot of people will find mentors, or even like, you know, unofficial mentors, that they that they ask a lot of questions to, to people that they work with, and maybe that's their manager or their lead. But I think it's important to kind of step outside of your, because I think it does force you to step outside of your comfort zone a little bit to talk to somebody maybe or to approach somebody that you know, that you maybe don't know, as well. But I think it also takes away like the politics of it of your working environment. So, you know, there's, it's more of just your opportunity to grow, you know, as a as an engineer versus like, you know, all the politics that come around with just working with somebody every day.

Ryan Burgess
So you mean almost like it's better to have someone outside of the company? Yeah, I

Derrick Showers
think so. I mean, like, you know, you go, I've thought about this numerous times, we've just never acted on it, but you go to a conference and like, you know, usually people that talk are always like, oh, yeah, like I love mentoring people or we're just people you meet at conferences, it doesn't have to be conferences and be anything meetups, whatever, right? And then, you know, just, I think just coming or, at least for me, anyway, it's like taking that initial step to, like, reach out to that person say, hey, you know, can you be my mentor? Or can you can I just, like, shoot some ideas off of you, you know, from time to time. But I think it's important because you just I think you learn a little bit differently than somebody you work with every day. And you know, you get a new perspective. It's kind of the advantage that we have, I think being on front and happier, too. It's kind of the same thing as we all kind of learn from each other because we're all different. Well, most of us, some of us are at different companies.

Ryan Burgess
Hey, I'm the only one from Netflix today.

Derrick Showers
Actually, yeah, there's two LinkedIn. But you know, you learn about things that you wouldn't necessarily learn about because you're just you just do things one way in your, at your, where you're working or what you're working on.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I like what you said too, is like reaching out to someone. I think it doesn't even have to be In the capacity of saying, Will you be my mentor? I think just reaching out to them on Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever it is email and asking, Hey, like, I have this, you know, I'm working on this project, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it, or what do you think about this? I'm applying for this certain job. Do you think that's the right move? I think people are always open to give advice. I mean, take it with a grain of salt, you don't have to listen to everything that people say, but it doesn't hurt. And I think there's a lot of people out there that will give advice.

Derrick Showers
I have a lot of people that are mentors that don't even know they're my mentor, because you know, I follow them. I'll you know, if ever they publish anything, are tweet about anything, like always go to the you know, these few people first and are always will go and you know, continue to read the article or whatever and interested in what they have to say. So I think, to your point, maybe it's just like replying to that just so you know, they kind of know that, at least they're helping and what they're saying is, is, is helping me. So you've

Ryan Burgess
been like when they're just random tweets, you're actually saying, Hey, that was super helpful to almost say, Yeah, trying to keep this going. Not super good.

Stacy London
Sort of on that unintentional mentor vibe to Ryan, and come on the show is someone that I had worked with several years ago. And he'd always been extremely encouraging to me for like, Hey, there's this conference, would you want to speak at it? And I'd never spoke at a conference before. And he was like, Hey, you should apply. You should do this. I probably never would have done it. Had someone not actually been like, No, you can you can do this. Try it. So that kind of encouragement, like unintentional mentorship of like, just encouraging you to do things that you're kind of uncomfortable with? Or

Ryan Burgess
sometimes you need that push. Yeah, it does help you trust Ryan. And you're like, okay, yeah, sure.

Stacy London
I'll try that. Right. Exactly.

Ryan Burgess
Um, what did you think afterwards? You did actually speak after that?

Stacy London
I did. It was great. I was super stressed out about it. But then afterwards, it was a really positive experience. I met a lot of cool people. And yeah, it was good.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, I think that's really important, too, in the on the flip side, for people that are speaking and are publishing things, you know, to do what Ryan did, and reach out to people that they know, would be a good speaker, or they know would would, you know, benefit from whatever information that they can share with them, which doesn't always happen. So I think it's important for us for, you know, for people that are more in senior roles to make sure that they're always thinking about that

Ryan Burgess
be interested to know, how is it useful having a mentor, I

Sarah Showers
tend to get inside my own heads very often. And it gets to the point where it's just a blocker in terms of me being able to move forward on the future I'm working on. And so the people on my team, I've had conversations with about this, have actually gotten into the habit that they will ask and check in with me, which forces me out of that, like, immerse like heads down experience, because it's really hard, as good as your intentions are, to like, time, block yourself, spend time in a problem, step away from it and revisit it. So just having those kinds of people around you to force you to take that mental break is super important to make. Otherwise I'll just spend hours not really getting anything done, thinking I am, but I'm not making any progress at all, or even

Stacy London
being intimidated to like, be like, if I asked a seamlessness probably super basic, I should figure this

Sarah Showers
out. Like I'm asking for help all the time. And so then I feel like I'm bothering people, but every single time they're like, you know, you should always absolutely ask us for help. It's just a very weird paradigm to get your head around and be okay with, you know,

Ryan Burgess
I think it's always that you want to spend enough time on your own to try and figure it out. But you also don't want to spend hours on hours banging your head against the wall, when someone you could lean over to a colleague and say, Hey, I'm having troubles with this, can you help, and that that is so powerful, I still do it all the time. It's the end. Usually, it's the simplest thing that you are regret asking, there's been times where I regret it. And I'm like, I should have just known that. But if I sat there for another hour or half an hour trying to figure it out, that was a waste of time. And it could have just been five minutes with someone else, a second set of eyes kind of

Derrick Showers
the same point, it really helps with imposter syndrome, that everyone goes through everything you go through a lot as a junior developer, you know, you go through a lot throughout your entire career, but I think at at one, at one point, I think you kind of start to just not care as much anymore. But you know, everyone goes through it. And my point is that it's if you have a mentor that somebody that you really look up to, and you you know, and you in and they tell you that looked like this is natural, everyone's going through this. I think just that reassurance is really helpful, especially since it's someone that you probably really respect

Ryan Burgess
and hopefully have a good experience. When you ask that you notice that it's not to Sarah's point is every time I ask it's not like someone's pissed off at me for asking. It's like if you do experience that, I mean, that's really shitty. I don't think I've ever experienced that. So it's like good reassurance to remember that people want to help they're not mad at you for asking. Everyone has to learn sometime. Here's, we've kind of talked about having a mentor, what makes a good mentor? Like, what are some traits that actually make a good mentor, someone that you would look up to? And ask questions.

Stacy London
I think someone that kind of has the tone of voice and empathy is huge, like someone that doesn't have when you ask them a question or like, there has to be me again, or some sort of way of giving you this advice in a way that makes it seem like, Hey, I was once there to it, because there's, there's some times he asked me a question about like, and you propose the way that you thought about it, you know, addressing it now. Actually, you should really do it this way. You're like, actually

Ryan Burgess
don't actually mean that's a perfect one. Anyone who says, No, not a good mentor. Yeah. Yeah, I think you hit on some really good things. Just empathy is huge, someone who's also generous with their time and has a real positive attitude. I think that's always really helpful in finding someone that you actually want to ask questions for. I also think someone who's really passionate about the work they do. Time and time again, if someone is passionate about what they do, they're more than happy to help someone new and learning, I just cheers. But yeah, they're always going to be happy to help. And I think those are all good things to look for. Another one is someone who celebrate success. I think someone you know, we all have great colleagues that will actually be happy when you do speak at a conference, or you push some major release out, and they're happy for you. It's like, holy shit, you did that. And like just those encouragement, things are very, very

Stacy London
helpful. They're just saying nice work. When someone Yeah, does something that's little he back is something

Sarah Showers
that I, like, I'll get like, one word, and I'll take that now, like, live off it for a very long time. I think people sometimes have a hard time giving feedback to people, but it doesn't have to be anything official, it can just be like, that was a really awesome, you know, RB, after they've done a code review, like, I used to freak out about submitting code for code reviews, because everybody has ads on it. It's really intimidating. So when somebody says, that was a really awesome, RB, that's huge to me. So like, the next time, I was much less intimidating, because I knew I could do it. And I knew people were saying, You did a good job.

Derrick Showers
When I was playing with RV,

Ryan Burgess
I was actually just gonna ask that.

Sarah Showers
RV is an internal tool that we use to post code review for

Ryan Burgess
sounds like

Derrick Showers
prs. Yeah, yeah, I think even even as you're going through an RB even if you're going as you're going through somebody's code, or it not even just this is, this is a great, you know, this is a great addition to the feature. But even like, I try to always just, you know, make little comments, like little things I see. So try to balance out the negative, so to speak, or the constructive, you know, whatever feedback with the positive like, oh, this this, you did this really well.

Ryan Burgess
I think that constructive feedback is good. I mean, it done in a right way is, Hey, why did you know this could be done better? Why did you do it this way? I'm all for that on my pull request. But you're right. If you get a ton of like negative or constructive, you're like, Did I do anything, right? Like it, it is nice to know, like, Oh, this is really nice. And I really like seeing this. But it's also I also don't want a bunch of fluff either. I don't want every line in my code being like, Oh, wow, you did so great. I love that variable name, like, don't really need that kind of positive feedback. It is good to have some constructive feedback as well. Yeah. Genuine past. Yeah, exactly.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, it helps. I think it helps you giving the feedback, because then the person, you know, people, a lot of people, even I would say even everyone at times is not good at taking feedback, right? Because sometimes it can get personal or you think it's personal. And it's really not. But so it helps you as the person giving the feedback to mix in some positive feedback, because then that person is not going to think that you're out to get them or that you're just you know, there's just a really horrible person will you'll be reviewing their code as well. Yeah, right. It always says tablespoon always

Ryan Burgess
turns Exactly.

Stacy London
I think another thing that makes mentor really good is someone that not only will like help you understand, say, like a new concept, or help you fix your code and code review and show you a better way to do something, but also show you how they arrived at that, like resource sharing, like saying, this is a better way to do it. And also, these are some really cool places that I learned how to get to that point. That's, I think, huge to like sharing resources and giving you tools for to learn and get better.

Ryan Burgess
That is really good, too. And so you're not just getting feedback on that pull requests. It's like, well, this is why it's probably a better idea or like thinking through how to do it the better route and this is how you came to that conclusion or also why it's better maybe for scale or whatever. The time and time again, I even love jumping on like a whiteboard with someone else and just walking through that process and someone kind of explaining that. It's so useful. How would you go about finding mentors? I know Derek, you kind of mentioned even just like, following someone on Twitter, or we talked about managers or Pete colleagues, but I'd be interested to know if you really were looking for a mentor, how do you go about finding one? Sort of

Stacy London
a tough question, because I had I had a woman approached me through, was gonna recommend going to meet up somebody like, okay, then you'll meet people that are doing the same thing as you are. And maybe from there, you can be bold and be like, Hey, would you mind, you know, helping me out from time to time, but there was a woman that had approached me through meetup. And she was like, Hey, how can I find a mentor? Someone that could like spend dedicated time with me throughout a week or whatever? And I didn't have a good answer for her because I was like, how do you connect up? And time is precious, and it's a very, it's kind of a big gift. And so to know that you could recommend somebody that actually will be willing to spend that time and, and do it well, is sort of hard. So I think it's a interesting question. And I don't have actually have a lot of good answers. I have one recommendation at the end for the show. And I'll save it for them. But I'm curious what you guys have come across? Well,

Ryan Burgess
I like to that you said that. It's it's also a time commitment. It is a time commitment on that mentor and the mentee, you're both working together. And you can learn from each other too. Like it's we're talking one way of like learning from a mentor. But cheers. Yeah. But yeah, it goes both ways. And it is a time commitment. Because I also don't think a to have a proper mentor, you need to actually spend sufficient time, you can't just, you know, shove them away and be like, Oh, hey, go look at this, if you want to spend some quality time and learning from each other, cheers.

Sarah Showers
100%.

Derrick Showers
So I'm just trying to think through, you know, in my head, if somebody came up to me and a meet up and said, Hey, can can you mentor me? I think what I would want is a little bit of work on the mentors part to tell me like exactly what they want from me, because there's so many different things, right? Do they want like, code reviews? Do they want help progressing their career do they want, you know, like, just a little bit of, I think work to show that they're, you know, interested and that they really want this and this something and then, you know, and maybe I'm not the right person to help them with that maybe maybe they're working on something that I really don't. And all they want is is code reviews, and you know, but you can probably find them somebody that that maybe can help them better. So because I've had, I've been to Meetups before, and maybe I don't think I've ever had somebody come up to me and say, Hey, can you be my mentor, but I have had somebody people come up to me and say, Hey, like, just, you know, just starting out, and I, and I was just wondering if like, I could just send you like my stuff? And you know, that's fine. But like, what do you want? What do you want out of this experience? You know, like, I'm happy to look at your stuff, but I'm just,

Ryan Burgess
I think you're looking at their stuff. What is it that you're looking for? Do you want me to look at ways to improve the code? Do you want me to just say, hey, I really liked this idea. Or you should change this? What are they actually trying to get information out of you?

Derrick Showers
I feel like there's been a lot of attempts to get some sort of like mentoring app, or, or site out there. But it never seems to work because of this reason. Because, you know, there's so many people that want mentors, and not enough, you know, and it's it is a big time commitment if you're a mentor. So I think maybe you know, something that'll help with that. Something that could help with that is if there's a place where you can go and like, kind of explain what you I don't know what it is, but it just seems like because if not why doesn't exist, right? Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
I like it. Yeah, it's a good idea. Next startup idea. I've actually helped mentor quite a few people throughout my career. And I've had good and bad experiences. And one thing I think Derek you were getting at too is like being clear what you want. One thing that I want to see if I'm helping someone is I want to see them putting in the work and effort. I'm not doing their work for them. And if they're not putting in all the effort, and I'll put in as much effort, as they put in, always will, I'll find time to do that. And there's been some people where they put in so much effort, and they they'll send me code to look at, they'll ask me questions about jobs that they're interviewing for. I've even jumped on calls with them to talk about interview questions and things that they should prepare for all that kind of stuff. I'm all happy to do that. But if they're not being prepared, or not putting in the time and effort, and they're just like, I don't know, just help me. That's a really, really vague question. And I don't want to spend the effort necessarily to help them if they're not willing to put in some effort as well. And there's been people that I've definitely tried to help grow in their coding skills, and they're just not not putting in the effort. So I kind of fall off and it's not my job to like babysit and make sure that they're doing their work. It's you know, if they're showing me code and they want me to look at it, I'll do that.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, it's the same thing. Like when you're when you're working on problem at work, and hopefully you don't just just look at it. You know, the problem you're trying to solve real quickly and go right away immediately and ask somebody a question some people do and that's annoying as hell but but you know, for the most part, you put some time into research. I think most of I think all of us would do that. You put some time into researching what you need to ask and, but it kind of applies the same way to ask For a mentor,

Ryan Burgess
yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I like the idea too is like Stacey even kind of mentioned, like meetups and conferences and, and things like that you do meet a lot of people, and it's a good area to start connect with them on LinkedIn, connect with them on Twitter. I mean, asking people questions, it's not that hard to just shoot back and forth a bit, it doesn't have to be a very official thing, where it's like, can you be my mentor, it could just go back to just asking some questions. And building off of that,

Stacy London
I think there's some programs out there that are starting to address the reasons why people ask for mentors. So like, I think there's a lot of people that want a mentor, because they want to, I need to learn how to do web development. That's not I don't know, if that's necessarily a mentorship relationship, but more like, I need help learning an entire curriculum. And so I think, programs like, you know, girl developments and these other firms that offer low costs, teaching, offer small class size, and kind of like direct access to someone who's in the industry and can help convey, you know, best practices on you know, in you learn, but it's a small group, and you don't have to do that, like one on one on one on one mentorship. It's, I want to learn this body of knowledge. Cheers. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
I think there's two there. There's two,

Derrick Showers
I totally agree, I think the what a mentor should be is maybe somebody helping you decide what programs to, you know, maybe maybe coming into a, you know, not doing any sort of software development before, you probably don't even know what girl developed is right. So like, just helping as having somebody help you find and now like, with the the boot camps that exist, there's so many of them, they all have different curriculum. And, and, you know, I think it's, I think that's a good question. Ask a mentor, you know, like, What's the best thing to learn? And probably a couple of different people, right? Because everyone has their opinion, and you shouldn't expect your mentor to teach you. The skill.

Stacy London
Yeah, cuz I've been asked to, you know, to help me learn JavaScript as well. That's a that's a really big

Ryan Burgess
pillar. How many frameworks, server side verse client side, there's endless amounts of possibilities. I have been asked that, or I've even been asked, like, what frameworks to start to look at? And that's a tough question to really answer. I still do. I'll give them my opinion. And I usually share that this is my opinion. And this is why I would choose this framework over this framework, especially in a state where the person's in some, some are easier to grow in and build that JavaScript, actual language. And then there's some that just make it really easy to create something, are you just wanting to build something really fast? Well, then there's certain frameworks that will help you. So I think it depends on what you're trying to get after. And that's usually how I asked the question.

Stacy London
Yes. Maybe mentorship is more about like guidance and resources, as opposed to being like a direct teacher.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I like that.

Sarah Showers
A lot of people that have reached out to me as a result of guests appearing on the show our bootcamp people, because that's my, that was my background, getting into web dev. And so like, I've had people like, Hey, can I buy you coffee? Let's talk about where I'm at and your experience and advice, getting from boot camp to like job ready, because there's, there's a gap, like, Yeah, you don't graduate from boot camp. And

Ryan Burgess
they do promise you that a little bit. Like, I think some of the boot camps, like over promise a little bit. And it's a lot of work.

Sarah Showers
Yeah, well, and so my experience at Boot Camp, halfway through, I decided I wanted to do front ends. And I was at a full stack boot camp. Full Stack was very loosely covering a small module of front end, all of my front end stuff is self taught. And so I spent months after I graduated, you know, working on Java scripts, because I'd spent like nine intensive weeks learning Ruby, I don't want to work in Ruby. So now I have to go and take my knowledge of now I know how to go and learn something, and use that to get myself ready for a job. Cheers. But yeah, so like, it's not necessarily always the technical aspect of mentorship. It's like, how did you get from where you were to where you are now? I think it's really cool. And I encourage people to reach out to me, because I'm happy to give advice and talk about my experience, because it's hard. It's a hard transition to make. But you should reach out to more than just one person because everybody's experience is different.

Ryan Burgess
I like that. I think that's really good advice, too, is like you can share your experiences and what you enter. And hopefully that helps. But the more experiences you hear about, hopefully you can learn from everyone's experiences and find the right one that works for you best and

Sarah Showers
if all you're asking for is a cup of coffee and a little bit of my time, I'll gladly get that.

Derrick Showers
I'm asking for a glass of whiskey.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. As you say anyone on this podcast would be willing for drink. Yeah,

Derrick Showers
I get a lot more to I get a lot more honest too.

Ryan Burgess
So I'm sure the more drinks that you have

Stacy London
Yeah, I think sharing the path story is important for a lot of people that are binning because I've gotten a lot of questions of, like, how did you get to where you are in this hesitancy to enter this field, thinking that there are certain prerequisites, and that those prerequisites are a CS degree from Stanford or something like that, you know, like having that. So to be a mentor to someone to let them know that there are multiple paths, and that you can be successful in different ways. Like, that's part of your good mentors, too.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, I totally agree. And that's becoming less and less of a requirement. So hopefully, I mean, I didn't graduate with a CS degree. And I mean, I think I can decently do what I do.

Ryan Burgess
I wouldn't be smart enough to be in Stanford. I'd be interested to know, too. There's we've talked a lot about mentorship for technical skills and coding, do we need a different mentor to talk about soft skills like growing in your career? Should that be the same person? Should that be a completely different mentor? Or maybe it's a little bit of both?

Sarah Showers
I think personal preference. If you're comfortable, being a little vulnerable, maybe with people that you know, you have to work with day by day, then sure, but not everybody might feel that's the case to like, have a mini freakout with somebody on their team, and then go back to like being professional. So it might be beneficial to go and find somebody that's on a different team or not even at your company.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, and then I think it also takes away the like, you know, maybe there's somebody on your team that you don't get along with, or maybe not digitally get along, but maybe it's like that person we talked about earlier that you ask a question to in a, you know, shoot, you know, shrug it off and act like you're an idiot, you know, if it's if it's your boss, or if it's somebody else in your team, that's hard to talk about, right? Because maybe their friends are, you know, so that's, I guess what I was trying to get at earlier with the whole politics part of it, you kind of take all that away, and you can be really honest, and you know, not that not the one to talk about somebody behind their back, but just you can be honest about the situation without worrying about it getting back to that person or offending somebody.

Ryan Burgess
Sure. I also think you should be able to lean on your boss to be able to talk candid like that. I know, that's not always the case. So

Derrick Showers
yeah, I mean, I agree maybe your boss is a different story. But maybe it's somebody that needs to lead on it. Maybe it's a co worker, and and maybe it's maybe it's not that, like you want to tell your boss that like, because I think a lot of people would feel like you're throwing that person under the

Ryan Burgess
bus. Yeah, no, I think that's why sometimes it is good to separate and have some, like another sounding board outside of the actual company. But I

Sarah Showers
also think the advantage of off it being a peer is that that feedback could get trickled back down in a positive way. And that person having received that feedback, they are able to grow themselves as a person. Not everybody would maybe take that kind of feedback. Well, but I think there are cases where it could work out. Yeah,

Derrick Showers
I think you're always gonna have somebody on your team that is your, your mentor, but not like officially, right? Like, you're always I mean, every team that I've ever been on, there's always been somebody, whether it's my lead, or my boss or another person on the team that I just respect. And just think that you know, for whatever reason that they just do a really good job. And I take advice from them, maybe more than somebody else on the team. I think everyone's kind of in that situation.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I think that's, that's a valid point is you always find people that you work with what you want to write when anytime you're looking for a job, or at least when I am, I want to find great people to work with and people that I can trust and learn from,

Derrick Showers
I think the good thing about having a mentor outside of the team is that maybe your mentor has been through a similar situation. And you know, you can ask him or her like how they've dealt with it. And so maybe it is something that you need to address with your manager, because that person really shouldn't be part of the team or shouldn't be part of the company. You know, but I think just getting that reassurance of like, okay, this, you know, you've been through this before, how did you handle this in the past? I think that's more valuable than how do I learn JavaScript, because there's ways you can learn JavaScript, there's plenty of ways that you can learn JavaScript, you just need to know how and but again, Google will help you.

Stacy London
And I think if you're if you've never if you're at your first job in tech, and you want advice about like, maybe you want to be a manager, some there something like that, if you get advice from somebody outside the company, you at least like your perspective is only one one perspective at this point because you're only at one company see only know how they do management or they do growing people and careers among the law. So it's like if you have something outside of that, at least thinking say like, Hey, what your company does is kind of interesting or different. And this is how we do it. That that I think is pretty helpful.

Ryan Burgess
You get a totally different perspective and you hear a different experience to have how Person A made it to like being a manager at that company,

Stacy London
or like the perspective of sometimes, like more company, this person. I think that The only path to making more money as an example would be to be in going to management, where somebody outside the company might be like, hey, actually, at my company, they offer like Principal Engineer paths where you don't have to do that. If you really like tech, you can do this. Like, you wouldn't have known that if you'd never worked anywhere else.

Derrick Showers
I think companies are trying to get better and better at this, right? And like, I know, Google has like, their top, what is their top position? Like fellow or something? Yes. Like they're like, they're like, in the same lateral matter, really the same as like, a senior vice president, which is cool. But like, most companies, there's like a certain level, I think, where like, like, the CEO is a people manager, right? So they're not coding. So there's a certain point where I, I don't know is that that you kind of have to, if you want, if you but I think you know, you also have to be okay with not being the CEO of a company, you know, if you're, if you're really good at engineering, and there shouldn't be the reason that you don't make more money and don't get promoted.

Ryan Burgess
Right, I think that's the thing is like, you should be able to grow as an engineer and continue doing amazing things, and your patient continue to grow with that, I honestly think that you should get paid more than managers, directors VPS, if you are amazing at doing that, I agree and continue to grow in that area. And I

Stacy London
think that's, that's where a mentor would be able to a good mentor will be able to help you understand those paths.

Ryan Burgess
One thing too, is like we've kind of got on the topic of management. And we've talked about having managers as mentors, I've definitely read that that's actually a terrible idea is having your men manager or boss, be your mentor. I'm on the fence on this one. Because I think like I said earlier, I've had managers, directors, bosses that have been really, really great mentors, and they do have my best interests at heart. I think sometimes it plays into a little bit of what Derek was talking about, of like, the political aspect is that they're, they're trying to make their team grow, make, you know, find the right position for the company, that kind of aspect. But I think there are great bosses out there that really do care about you, and want you to succeed. And if it's not at that company, or on that team, they're going to help you grow and find a new spot for you. So I'm on the fence on that. I think I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Derrick Showers
I mean, I pretty much said what I what my thoughts are, and I lean more towards being against it. But that said, I think we've talked about like, unofficial mentors a lot. Right? And so like, I think that there's obviously managers that you have, and hopefully there's managers that you have that you learn from and and that you you learn a great deal from right, and I gotta call

Ryan Burgess
you cheers. Cheers.

Derrick Showers
But like an official mentor, I just think it's it's for the reasons that I already talked about is think it's just not. I think, though, that said, I think a manager, should I like encourage managers to mentor people on different teams, because they have the experience of like, have, you know, they clearly have been through a probably have been through a lot, you know, and I'm pretty experienced. So I think that they can really share a lot of valuable information with others.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I like that idea too, as I think also you can, it's you can have more than one person to bounce these ideas off is like, maybe it is your manager, but don't just trust that go to someone else or go to like another team or a completely external person. Yeah,

Derrick Showers
I definitely think you should. I mean, if you have that trust with your manager, and you're learning from your manager, and you're able to talk openly with your manager, I think that's an awesome thing. I would never say that you shouldn't do that. But like a mentor and like an official capacities, just seems like it's

Ryan Burgess
weird. Have any of you had any negative experiences with a mentor? I can't I can't

Stacy London
say that I have because like, I don't ever haven't gravitated since I haven't had an official mentor like levy manager. It's I gravitate towards people that are just going to be nice, helpful to me. So haven't those people on the team that have when I've asked them a question, and they've been condescending or something, I'll just avoid them then. And so like, and they're never going to be my mentor. So I guess I can't say I'm like a bad experience with a mentor because I just sort of naturally go towards

Ryan Burgess
you've had bad experience asking for help. Yeah, you learn quickly not to ask them anymore. Yeah, exactly. That makes sense.

Derrick Showers
And experiences in the past, like the fear figure out how I phrase this person isn't really so I've looked up to this person as far as like figuring out how to how to get started and very valuable in the beginning of my career, but I didn't really like this person's work ethic. They just felt like they were a little bit lazy sometimes and and so that was kind of hard to because it's like I you know, I learned a lot I had had, I just have to watch how much I say cuz you get what I'm saying.

Ryan Burgess
But at the same time you learn not to follow what they're doing. Exactly,

Derrick Showers
exactly. I think that's really valuable point is you it's just as important to learn what to do is it is to learn what not to do. Yeah, cheers. twice,

Sarah Showers
learning learning the kind of developer you don't want to be is just as important is a person

Ryan Burgess
even doesn't even have to be like just yeah, getting back to the soft skills and everything to is like this is how you grow in your career is it's not just technical it's it is how you personally are and how you interact with people. One last question to finish the episode, do you actually think you need a mentor as a junior engineer to grow into a senior engineer,

Sarah Showers
I don't think it can hurt by any stretch of the imagination. I think the more people in your network that even if it's just passively, you know, you're out at dinner with a group of friends that were clown for an unhappy hour. And you just have conversation. Like, even in that capacity, like mentorship is great. It doesn't have to be like that official. You know, maybe you're an intern and you're assigned to senior engineer to help you. Like, you can go ask other engineers that horizontally work on the same team? Or don't, I think that also goes to help like he was an intern, potentially get an offer, at the end of your internship, you know, the more people that can speak to what you contribute, and to you as a culture fits, goes a long, long way. Shouldn't be undervalued.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, I would say 100%. Yes. And it doesn't have to be the official mentor. But if you don't look up to like, you know, the flipside of that is you're not like looking at anyone for guidance through your career. And I don't think you're gonna get very far You know, it maybe it's as simple as following people on Twitter, maybe it's as simple as you know, going to conferences and meetups and like having your favorite speakers, it doesn't have to be somebody that you meet with at a coffee shop, or, you know, somebody that you buy whiskey for coffee at a painting we will take. But, yeah, I mean, you, you have to, I think you have to have, I would say multiple people that you respect and look up to and to help you figure out what you want to do with your career.

Stacy London
Even if it's not that official mentor mentee relationship, it's being inspired by somebody following them, maybe reaching out to them at some point, but just being excited and finding those people that inspire you, and following them on Twitter or whatever, you know, mediums that you get your information from, I think that's pretty huge. That's because this career is not, it's not this, you learn it, and you're done. And you kind of do this repetitive thing over and over, you're constantly reteaching yourself, at least in front end reteaching yourself your entire stack of stuff, you know how to do every few years. So if you don't have people that you look up to and follow and get inspired by, I think it's harder.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, I think that's that's a good point. And I love to that even Derek and Sarah both mentioned even like this podcast, like I feel like the group of people that we work on this podcast with I learned from all the time and and inspired by like the work that each of us are doing. And we do lean on each other. So even all you know, leaning more senior engineers, you're still learning from each other, which I think is amazing. I think that's something that we continue to grow. And I don't think I ever could know everything there is to know in front end development at all.

Derrick Showers
I mean, if you feel that way, there's a problem. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
Well, then you just like look to like the latest medium article or something on Twitter, there's probably some new framework out there that I don't even know about, so I can't know everything. Alright, as we wrap up today's episode, we like to share pics of things that we find interesting that we'd like to share with everyone. Let's go around the table and share our picks for today's episode. Stacey want to start it off? Sure.

Stacy London
This one's not related to mentorship at all. It's related to putting headphones on and coding, the newest Butovo album migrations really good. It's really chill. I think it's really great thing to code to listen to. So that's my first pick. And then my second pick is Girls in Tech is a good organization where they actually do offer mentorship programs, and I'm sure it's different, like depending on what city chapter and what they what they put their efforts towards. But I know that they have mentorship programs and programs where you can align and get assigned to somebody and start, you know, learning from them. And I think that's just like a nice direct avenue to getting a mentor.

Derrick Showers
Cool. So mine are not mentor related, but I haven't been on the show since since last year. He

Ryan Burgess
had like a ton of picks.

Derrick Showers
So my first pick is Istanbul. I went to Istanbul, I went to a bunch of we travel all across Europe and we went to a bunch of places and everything was great. And I had actually never traveled outside the United States other than England and Canada. So it kinda was just Niagara Falls.

Ryan Burgess
So I guess I could call this nice.

Derrick Showers
I think it's more of a general thing of just like step outside of your comfort zone and travel you learned so much, you know Before we went to Istanbul, everyone's like, I can't believe you're going to Istanbul like that. You're gonna get shot, you're gonna die. But but it was such an amazing city, everyone is so friendly. They're the most the friendliest of everyone that we met throughout the entire trip was in Istanbul. And, you know, obviously, you need to be alert anywhere you go, because things can happen. And terrorism's definitely a thing, but can happen anywhere and can happen in your backyard. So and so I don't think that should scare people away from trouble. That's exactly what they want. Okay, anyway, my second one is kind of a rant too, because I last episode, everyone was bashing apple. So I have to come up with an apple pick, I feel like I have to. And I know you guys talked about it last week, but and the air pods actually waited in line for the air pods. But I wanted to get them before your if

Ryan Burgess
that's to be clear, I was actually saying

Derrick Showers
they are really good. And for all the reasons that Ryan mentioned in the last episode, if you take them out of your ear, everything, everything, whatever you're listening to automatically pauses. So if you're listening to front end, happy hour, you don't want to miss a thing. So anyway, really cool. I really like them. And then the by my last pick is a shameless plug for the LinkedIn redesign that just started rolling out this week. It's been in the works for a couple years. And it is is awesome. It looks a lot nicer. It brings us up to like, current times as far as design patterns and stuff, and it's all built member. So it's huge. Yeah, it was a huge undertaking, you know, to scale Ember to the point where it did for and we've talked about that a couple of times in the episode. So if you don't get it yet, you will soon linkedin.com

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, unfortunately, I don't get it yet. But it looks beautiful. I'm excited to get it. Sarah, what do you have for us this episode

Sarah Showers
already lost an airport, by the way, it was it was found but I bought a cable for my wireless headphones.

Derrick Showers
For everyone that can't see her though, she's very small ears. So

Sarah Showers
I do. So two things I want to share. We talked about Girl Develop It a little earlier, I actually went to Girl Develop It prior to Deb boot camp to get some fundamental knowledge before I went and everything was went to our intensive. There's chapters all over the country. In fact, there's like one in the Bay Area. There's one in Oakland, there's one in San Francisco, there's one in San Jose just in the bay area alone. So definitely look into them. Reach out to the chapter leaders, if there's something that you think you would like that they're missing, they might entertain, put it into the curriculum. And what's really cool is since I've been going to classes I now give back I have been a teaching assistant. Probably once every six months they reach out. San Francisco actually has so much demand for teaching assistants that I can only do once every six months. So everybody gets a turn, which I think is an amazing problem to have. My second pick is LinkedIn announced this week, they're piloting a program called Reach, which is intended to provide opportunity to people with non traditional backgrounds take part in a six month apprenticeship at LinkedIn, a paid internship with benefits that may potentially lead to opportunities after the fact is a pilot. But you should definitely go check it out. We'll get the link to Ryan's so if anyone's interested in applying, definitely, it's huge that a company that's big is starting to like play with programs like this. I really hope it takes off and I will be officially a mentor assigned a mentee with this program. So there's that too. Nice.

Ryan Burgess
You know, totally funny is yesterday. He I think it was yesterday, I saw someone walking around with a LinkedIn reach shirt. And I wondered like what his reach. So there you go. Now I understand what it is. Yeah, all right. For my pics. I don't have anything related to mentors. Unfortunately, I do have a Netflix Original that I watched this weekend, I believe is only a few episodes, but it's called the investigator. It's about a murder that happened in the UK happened like in 1985 or something and the guy didn't get convicted till like 10 or 15 years later. This is a really interesting story. And this guy investigates the whole murder and brings up all these interesting things. So I definitely recommend checking that out. Then yesterday, there was the women's march across the world, which is amazing. So I thought why not pick something along those lines. Shepard Fairey the artists who did the Obama campaign posters, if you all remember those back a few years ago, he designs a series of posters called We Are The People. I thought they're really amazing. And he actually linked to them to download the full res versions. So people had printed those and actually use them in the March yesterday. So I saw lots of them and I thought why not linked to them. They're beautiful posters. Definitely worth checking out. All right, Sarah, thank you for joining us on today's episode as a guest, this is your third time on here. Where can people get in touch with you?

Sarah Showers
You can find me on Twitter at Sarah l showers. Sarah with an H. I'm there.

Ryan Burgess
Thank you all for listening today's episode, make sure to rate us on iTunes and Google Play and follow us on Twitter at front end. Ah ah, any last words whiskey whiskey, Derek wants whiskey to help be a mentor.