Overcoming the Challenges of Mentoring by Kim Crayton

Speaker 1: No, let's do that again. Please welcome the amazing Kim. That's what I'm talking about. Yes! Yes! Welcome I am Kim Creighton. And I, you can get all this stuff out of the way. Please tweet. I need people to know that I exist. So Kim Creighton1, that is my main Twitter. We'll be talking about Junior Dev Mentoring, which is my mentoring website and Slack team. We also have Junior Community engineering report, which is my new podcast that talks about community um diversity, community And safe spaces in tech from an economic standpoint.

Speaker 1: I'm not gonna argue with you about your politics, not gonna argue 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. um 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 crap I see on Twitter and whatnot, I've just started just putting out we can 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, um I I was speaking at a Closure West conference and one of the 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?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: What am I doing?

Speaker 2: Um maybe turn it down.

Speaker 3: No, it's not something she can do.

Speaker 1: Okay. All right. So um he say in community he said we're um engineers, you're a community engineer. I was like, that sounds good. So I went to 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. Oh, but it usually gets you nowhere. It's the engineering that you need to make the engine. the hard stuff work. It's the operationalizing your mission, your vision, your goals. That's where people make a mistake. So you'll put your they'll put their vision in there mission statements on their websites, but just because you put it there that doesn't mean anything.

Speaker 1: So that's what a community engineer is. And I'm I added this to my slide today because I am transitioning. I am in the last few months of my doctoral program. I am, thank you for those who clapped. Um I am my thesis, my um so a doctoral program Different from a PhD program. I have a DBA because PhD is theory. I'm all about practical. I'm not trying to test theories. I'm trying to put theories In the play. So this 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

Speaker 1: , August 2014. It started before then, but um it started with I've always been a tech person. I was the person who would go to would watch the Apple Keynote, not 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 were important to me. So if I had to build a website I mean I just went to YouTube, followed, found something, Googled um WordPress, found some good um themes and just it took me f 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 But I was more than a consumer

Speaker 1: attack. In 2014, as an only child, my worst fear came. I thought um the th death of a parent would really just knock me out. And my father and I lived together and And so he died of cancer in 2014, but I didn't die. And so it's led me to think, uh, let me back up. I was an educator. high school teacher. I don't like your kids. I don't like your kids. Let me okay, hold on. I really don't like your kids. And it's a part uh most of it is because you 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 every

Speaker 1: Everyone wants to complain about millennials, but you got them believing that they're so freaking special. And so they have this false idea of 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. kids. So I'm gonna leave. So I went away to um okay my clicker 's not working. So I went away to Maui for a week Yeah, exactly. I went away to Maui for a week and as I was crying and snotting and and surfing and snotting and crying and I had an epiphany. I said, screw this, I'm going in the tech. So I sent back a text message to the people who would care and I said, I'm going in the tech, and yes, I put it in quotes, because I said, when I figure that out, I'll let you know

Speaker 1: 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, um this is gonna be interesting. So when I came back home, um I ended up immediately going to workshops and conferences and and and 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, what is this stuff? UX UI what oh I didn't know that thing had a name in Internet of Things Oh that thing has a name because I was playing around I mean I knew about connected technology I knew but I never I was putting names on things so I was just like in awe the first months. And so I believe the um so

Speaker 1: 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 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 where 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 I was black and female. Check? Yeah? Check? You got something free? Check check. Yeah. I mean, I was just going for it. So it was like, I just felt like a superhero. I was like, yes. I'm a black female. You got something for free? Freak it this way.

Speaker 1: So that's what I did until people kept saying, oh, you really need to learn the code, Kim. It's so easy. Oh, Kim, you really need to learn the code. It's so easy. Coding is not easy. Which led me to write this blog post. Stop lying to newbies. Just stop doing it. You're doing them a disservice. You're doing us the the industry a disservice because this shit's hard Learning is hard, period. Learning a language is even harder. And so we we

Speaker 1: we and you devalue what you do when you tell people that this is easy. Maybe you forgot what it was like when you first started. Um, but this shit's hard. And we need people, we need to stop doing it for the reason reasons that we need people in the industry. There are jobs everywhere. You know, you hear this mantra, oh my God, there are so many jobs that we can't find qualified people to fill them. Oh my God, there's so many jobs we can't call. Like, oh my God, that's like shut up already. We heard you. There's so many jobs we 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 field.

Speaker 1: It's the number of newbies who stay in the field. That's the problem. We don't have a great way of of helping people acclimate to this this wild west. There is no path. If you uh do this at every talk. Can you raise your hand if 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. This is the only thing 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 liable So even when you're a custodian, they expect you to know how 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 it's a few lines of code. Let's figure this out.

Speaker 1: 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, particularly career changers 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 boot camps. I have a problem with boot camps. And I'm happy that some of them are closed down because if I pay fifteen thousand dollars for a course, there is no child left behind. You're gonna figure out how to make this work for me And the reason that that model is not working because it only works for a subsect of people. It works for people who have some kind of technical

Speaker 1: engineering background, who are looking to be focused and can handle a 12-week, 16-week with um whatever accelerated program. But it's because it's not enough of those people, they start mark bringing the marketing and salespeople. 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 or function is on day one is going to do well in a twelve 12-week accelerated class where every two days they're learning something new. It's not gonna happen. So you've just wasted their money. And most times you require them to leave their jobs and be with 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.

Speaker 1: So you 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 is some research that I've been 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-pacing uncertainty of today's economic climate have business leaders turning to mentoring as a strategy for increasing organizational knowledge or knowledge sharing. And organizational leaders have reported, now this is a big number, the ineffective employee mentoring and ineffectu

Speaker 1: in in uh inadequate um knowledge sharing is costing three thirty one point five billion dollars per year Now, if that 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 and professional mentoring. And youth and adult mentoring. So we're gonna, so those are the quadrants, and we're gonna start with the youth. Mentoring youth is focused on them. When I'm mentoring a young person, somebody under age 18 years old. It's not about Kim. It's about making sure I provide that person with the skills and they need to become a taxpaying, law-abiding citizen.

Speaker 1: Hopefully happy. That is my goal. What I 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 and going to people's birthday parties and and 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. Um, adult mentoring is usually focused on a specific career They're trying to accomplish. So it's not this an this nebulous ongoing thing. It's something specific.

Speaker 1: It's focusing on making them better at doing something. And um it's It's 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 Um mentoring that doesn't I I've I have mentored some people and I'm just like Lord Give me strength 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 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.

Speaker 1: We talked about that personal mentoring. That's that whole, oh, come over to meet my grandma. It's her 70th birthday. Then you're thinking about what am I bringing as gift This woman I've never met, that you know, this all this stuff. Not with professional. Mentoring, um, it's the best mentoring to me is an apprenticeship program It's where you bring people in. We have and we have history that we have tons of research. I mean 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 um tat tat

Speaker 1: How do you take tacit knowledge from someone who knows it? And tacit knowledge is that learned experience, which is different from it could explicit knowledge. So you want to take that knowledge that someone has has because they learned it and experienced it. How do you transfer that to someone else? That's what um that's the challenge. But if you have um 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 can be done. that work. Alright, so we're going to 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 out.

Speaker 1: 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 somebody asked before, just direct them to you don't have to be snipey about this isn't appropriate, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. There is there are no rules When you come to Stack Overflow, because most people have Googled it. So I 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 you know Stack Overflow like guards If there was a when I Googled it, it sent me to a page with some rules, then I would say fine.

Speaker 1: 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 page people's back because they don't know what that is. They've been told to Google. They don't know that there are rules on Stack Overflow. Also, when you're doing this, what I had many times Um 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 just sitting there with now this code that you don't understand because they made you change it. And you just gotta hopefully you use git so you can roll back something. But the ch 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

Speaker 1: Stack Overflow and um and and Slack, there 's the fires. My house is on fire, please help me me um and there there's it is mentoring is changes so what mentoring is is a relationship that's one of the reasons I built Junior Dev Mentoring. It was a it's a website where people can make a commitment for a year to mentor or mentor someone. What I found was a challenge was people again this people don't know how to ask for mentoring. They don't know how to give I have people coming up to me, Kim, will you mention me first of all I don't know 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 web development

Speaker 1: do you know how broad that is It's like no, that's no, no. So when I started the stack the Slack channel that is very active is to allow people to Who 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 are having trouble figuring out how to build relationships. You know, people go to um This whole going to meetups and passing out cards, that just b 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 connected nothing to you. We need to have a meaningful conversation or something something for me to connect who and what 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

Speaker 1: 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 gonna be there you say hey I need to reschedule. You don't just drop the ball. You 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 it's a commitment. It's like it could be it could be as short as, you know what, I'm gonna mentor you on this thing for I have, let's say, I have six months, but in six weeks I know a big project's coming up Give me tell me something you're 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 person professionally transformation. 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 pitfalls is.

Speaker 1: It's like you're just walking on you Go ahead, clap, baby. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, people need to know from these newbies. I mean, it's like you're forever walking on line on minefields. You're just woof Poof and you like why it's like ridiculous. You don't know a thing that's going on. So your face is getting blown off, your oh you have no limbs, you're just walking around like this, and everybody's like, you look 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, um, the role of mentoring, you need to understand that it's vocational support. You're providing psychos psychosocial supports, role modeling. Um and I'm gonna

Speaker 1: 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. Evaluate your motivation, honest assessment of your time, your talent, and your temperament, realistic, set realistic goals, and give them examples. Um and uh for the Menti, reciprocity, respect the relationship, and identified um goals. Okay, Menti mentors have no minty have no idea what a 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

Speaker 1: no you can 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 about all those things. Mentors, it's 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 mentor minty and they're gonna leave. Um 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 longer than 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 Mint imposter syndrome is my pet

Speaker 1: peeve. Newbies do not have imposter syndrome. You don't know shit You can't be an impostor. Imposter syndrome are for people who have skills who um still doubt their skills. But if you don't know anything, you can't have imposter syndrome. You wouldn't tell a baby, oh, you have imposter syndrome and you because you can't roll over. I mean that's just absurd. They just don't know. You don't know a variable. You it's not like you're making, I'm not joking. I don't know what this thing is So if you see any mental um young newbies saying that they are have imposter syndrome, because everybody wants to have this label for some reason, please correct them. They do not have imposter syndrome. How much time You're out of time. Okay, because that's we started late. Okay, well, um my uh

Speaker 1: No, yeah, exactly. Um we started a little late, so okay, that is it. Um I have the slides because there's some other stuff on here. So thank you

Speaker 4: So the cool thing is, Kim, because you book into a break, we can definitely talk about your developer service. results.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 4: So it it's break time, but let's just do it. Let's go for it.

Speaker 1: Alright, so um this is from Stack Overflow because I 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 um computer science degree, they're teaching you a different skill. You're learning how to solve problems, um, algorithmic Lee, so they're using Python or whatever they're using to solve problems. They're not the the language they're using is for them like writing a paper using a pencil. You you're not the pencil. You're not I don't know 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 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

Speaker 1: less than eight years experience, but if you look at it, most people have less than three years experience. And as you know, 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 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, is 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 people are self-taught.

Speaker 1: 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 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 um web development. It's too broad, but we're just gonna use this in an example. So we already know to somebody to be an effective of um developer or web development they need to know CSS um HTML and JavaScript at least minimally right so what I would do is say hey um project based learning here's a document that has some text on it We're just gonna start with HTML.

Speaker 1: 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 some color to the background or some other stuff. So now I'm bringing in CSS. But 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 um that's why I don't like boot camps because you don't get the time to try to figure you just doing this a lot and you just don't know what's going on. So then they add some color and then you say who Let's use the box method. Whoa, 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 is this margin, is this pattern I don't know what this thing is. So you do that thing.

Speaker 1: Then once they get then you say, hey, let's add a click event. That's it. You don't just give them a whole project and just say you just add, you keep scalled scaffolding You just keep adding to it. So what I need you to do is that box that we just did, let 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 measurable, and people know it's very objective. It's not subjective. And this is what I would usually do in assessment, but we don't have time. I'll take any questions later, but thank you again And

Speaker 1: if you would like to get involved, this is how you get involved.