10/2 - Software Mentorship: Taking our Industry to the Next Level
Janelle Klein
Software Mentorship: Taking our Industry to the Next Level
Agenda: 30 min presentation + discussion
When: Thursday October 2nd at 6:00pm
Where: Mister Tramps (Map)
To everyone out there whose life and career is wrapped around software development:
Working for a software-niche recruiting company, I do a lot of tech screens in Austin. I talk to one developer after another, who can speak about Agile, Lean, and all the latest buzzwords, but when I learn about how they actually do their work -- I see them try to put these principles into practice and it's clear there's a huge gap in understanding. These aren't just junior developers -- they're often people with 10-20 years of experience.
Most of what we learn about software development is not from books or presentations, it's from experience. If we don't get the right set of experiences, we never quite get it. Most people have never seen a well run software project. They might have an ok team, but they've never seen great. The opportunity to work with exceptional people is quite rare.
There's something special that happens when we work with exceptional individuals -- they challenge our ideas and make us think. They help us to clarify our beliefs and reason about trade-offs in a craft where nothing is that black and white. The art of software development is learned through mentorship.
If we want to solve this problem in our industry, we need a way to fill the mentorship gap. If someone is ready to learn, we should be able to teach. We need a way to drive peer mentorship in the software community.
I've been working on a strategy for how to solve this problem, and I'd like to hear your thoughts, your feedback, and get your help to make this happen. If you'd like to see mentorship become a standard practice in our industry, come join me on October 2nd.
Marisa Sawatphadungkij
Definitely!
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