The Power of Mentoring
Knowledge is the highest form of currency to pay forward and give back.
Paying it forward and giving back is the mission of augustwenty. We seek to teach others good practices and principles as we help our clients solve the gnarliest of problems. Recently I had the opportunity to talk with one of our world-class engineers, Jed Duffey, about his involvement with the Columbus State Career Services Mentorship Program.
Throughout our conversation, Jed expressed his innate interest in helping and teaching others a variety of practices and tricks that he has learned along his journey in the last decade as he made a career change to technology. Some time ago, Jed discovered an opportunity for anyone interested in mentoring for Columbus State. He followed up and volunteered to work with students who are either at the beginning or in the middle of pursuing education in technology. Although the program is very free flowing from mentor to mentor, one of Jed’s personal objectives with each student is to give them an accurate idea of what to expect day to day as a software engineer. He believes it is important for the sake of time and money for these students to know what they are getting into and what to expect. Interestingly he found that on one occasion a student realized early on that the true developer/coding profession was not for him—however, Jed recognized this student's affinity for UX and UI. Jed was able to redirect this student to another peer that had experience in UX and UI and was willing to mentor this student in an area where he would thrive. Within the tech industry there are many career directions a person can pursue and sometimes it takes getting in the trenches or shadowing someone who can enable you to see what a role is all about.
In general, Jed is the kind of guy who enjoys helping people so his mentoring passion and abilities haven’t been restricted to just the students at Columbus State—he has also helped friends looking to make career jumps into the technology industry. Most recently he started mentoring a friend looking to break into the field. Over several months of work with Jed, that friend is about to begin his tech career with Chase. The gratifying part to Jed is seeing how much confidence is gained by the mentee and the practice of the principles he has taught them. And speaking of confidence, that is one of the key things Jed really tries to zero in on with each person he helps. Tech is very mental and can be siloed. “You have to know what to do when working solo,” says Jed. “People often are afraid to code for fear of breaking something, or losing their existing work.” Jed teaches and encourages each one through a series of exercises on how to “fail forward.” He teaches them first how to save their work using version control tools such as Git. Therefore, when they go back to working on a project they can try a variety of coding solutions and even if they break it they won’t lose what has already been proven to work. Trying a variety of solutions and experiencing errors is actually encouraged because that is how they best learn and gain confidence in discovery and correcting. Each “error” is what Jed refers to as “another hint in a detective story.” Errors are not bad, but can certainly mess with our confidence. NO! They are actually great and are the stepping stones needed to succeed.
Many of the practices and tricks Jed shares with his mentees he has discovered through his journey of learning to become a software engineer. His recommendation to others is to find a project of personal interest and return to it consistently. Experiment, code, break, fix, save and continue this process over and over—building confidence all along the way.
An integral part of our team’s practices is to teach, learn, and build— and is what we call paying it forward and giving back. Like Jed, we become mentors and teach, encourage, and work together to build something of value. There is no greater currency than knowledge—and we pride ourselves, as Jed does, on paying it forward and giving back.
What recommendations would you give to a mentee? We would love to know!
