Mentoring is brilliant

Up until I started my current job, I had never officially mentored someone or been mentored. I had taken part in PR reviews and I'd paired with people, but I had never been part of an official mentoring process. That feels wild to me now because in the last three years, I've had the absolute honour and joy of mentoring several people as well as being mentored and I can honestly say that I have grown and learned an unimaginable amount from everyone. I would highly recommend having a go if you're given the opportunity and this article explains why I think you should do so.

You grow, I grow, we all grow!

Obviously, becoming a mentee helps you grow, that goes without saying. Having someone whose sole purpose it is to feed you new learning opportunities and materials will level up your progress like nobody's business. Less obvious though, is the fact that it's not just mentees that benefit from this relationship. When I started mentoring, I never thought I'd learn new technical skills by doing it, but I absolutely did. Finding new ways of explaining things when someone is struggling to understand a concept will improve your communication skills, sure, but you might just brush up some of your technical skills too. For example, I love doing CSS art with my mentees because it's fun and they end up learning without even really realising it. In the process, I've learned some new CSS tricks myself and I've cemented my working knowledge of flexbox, grid and other advanced topics.

Giving back feels good

Remember when you were a junior engineer, just starting out? I don't know about you, but I was naive and young and inexperienced and itching to make my mark. Unfortunately, I mostly worked at very small companies where I was the only software engineer and I had nobody to learn from. I would have loved to have a mentor guide me in my career because I had zero clue what on earth I was doing. I had to make many mistakes and learn the hard way. Perhaps you had a different start to your career and you did have mentors, in which case it feels good to be able to do what they did for you, but for others, right? Either way, being able to support and empower others who are earlier on in their journey is very rewarding.