NO MENTORSHIP For Developers At Startups?! [360 Video]

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hey folks we are going to go to the comments for the topic for today so wanted to say thanks to viewers for writing in this one says hey had a question I'm c a startup with less than 20 Engineers I'm just getting into my career as a software engineer less than a year of experience and I don't feel like I'm getting mentored much this is normal and could it be detrimental to my growth as a software engineer in said for context I feel like I'm keeping up with other Engineers but it's all on my own so they're kind of interested in like if you're at a startup especially a smaller one I would consider 20 people smaller is um like what maybe what's normal what's expected so I'll talk through that I just got a punch in let me get the car started got a

driving a CrossFit we have a the CrossFit first CrossFit open workout which means I'm about to be uh destroyed by something or a series of things that I'm very bad at which is great news um instant 360 is going hopefully we don't see anything too crazy the Amazon driver that was parked in my driveway for 20 minutes has decided to uh leave the driveway which is very nice and um we'll get started here so I'll start off with turning the beeping off um so for context because I realize different viewers uh coming from uh or that may may be returning and some that may be brand new here um the context for me is that I currently work at Microsoft as a principal software engineering manager it's been just under five years but prior to that I worked at a startup and uh I worked

at that startup from around the time it was around seven people until it was in the mid2 200s uh the company was very successful uh they ipoed a year after I left and then a year after that they got bought back to private for roughly $2 billion that's so the be and um so unfortunately I missed those parts but uh was there at the beginning and through a lot of the uh extreme growth phases and stuff so that's the context for when I go to talk about some of this stuff and of course you know everything that I'm going to say here is purely my own opinion and my experiences um you know every every scenario is going to be different so all that I can do is try to share my experiences and then try to call out biases generalize as much as possible

um so if you want questions answered leave them in the comments or send a message to Dev leader on social media it's also my main YouTube channel that has uh more succinct edited Down video so it's not just me rambling in a car okay so um I would say I wouldn't be totally concerned right um and the the short version of this whole video is I think I turned out okay and I didn't have mentors um so or at least uh in like the obvious sense um so not to be totally concerned about I just realize I'm also in the wrong lane and it's too late but that's okay the directions will adjust thank you Google Maps um I'm going to a different gym today that's why the uh I want to say and again this isn't going to be the same everywhere but I

feel like at in a startup um for those of you that have not been in a startup um depending on when you get into the the startup it might be kind of past some of the the really big hurdles okay like if you haven't run a business before um you may not realize that like no it's not just writing code and you know creating the software there's a lot more going on um you know it could be finding your Market fit you're trying to build something and get it in front of people and you're not even sure if people are interested in it but now you have employees and you got to be paying like it's there's there's a lot of stuff going on right it's not uh not just steady state that's probably the last thing that it is and I think it's important

to realize that because in or in my opinion for startups to have better chances of success it's going to mean that not a normal amount of time and effort goes into to making those things happen now for for people that have had success building startups uh and founding companies and stuff uh you know and I don't have stats on this this is just my my understanding but I bet you their first one was probably them working around the clock and it was a nightmare right super hard work I bet you the second one was maybe if they done like if they're serial entrepreneurs I bet you the second one was a little bit less crazy and as you progress and they have more success ESS at doing these they're able to understand what to focus on more effectively doesn't mean there's not going to be

bumps in the road and stuff but it gets a little bit easier at least a little bit more clear now the reason I'm bringing this up is that because startup life is going to be a little bit nuts um I think that it requires and it maybe requires to strong aboard I think that you will be better off if you're the kind of person who is very proactive very eager the reason I say that is because if you're looking for a lot of structure you're waiting for things to be kind of put in front of you um you know laid out a certain way I think that given the lack of structure that you'll probably find at most startups the the amount of pivoting the amount of change the amount of uncertainty in like all aspects you will probably find it difficult right if you're

looking for that kind of structure so when this person's writing in to ask about like hey like I don't have a dedicated Mentor or I don't feel like I have a lot of mentorship built in um the reason I'm saying I wouldn't be too concerned about that is like if you are the kind of person who is um you know very eager to go solve problems you're I don't I don't know if it's like a whatever too cheesy but like a go-getter kind of thing that's too cliche to say um but I think if you're that type of person when you're at a startup there's all sorts of problems in front of you that need to be solved right all of these challenges that need Solutions or that could have Solutions maybe I shouldn't say need and I think that if you're in an environment

that gives you some of that autonomy to be able to focus on things and you have other team members that are similar then instead of having instead of having mentorship look like I have you know someone that's much more senior than me and they are my mentor instead what you get is almost like a network right you're you're given autonomy so you can be going and kind of if you're kind of a eager type you're pushing the limits on what you're trying and learning and all these challenges you're focused on and simultaneously the people around you are doing similar things now because all of you let's hope are similarish in that regard where you're all eager excited to solve problems that kind of thing when I talk about this network effect it's like the people around you are also doing similar types of learnings perhaps

in different areas and instead of having like you know the senior on the team or that's in close proximity to you being your obvious Mentor the entire team around you is a group that can help you up level and so if I even reflect on my own experience right when I said you know I didn't have mentors that probably isn't a fair statement I didn't have like what we might call a traditional Mentor right it's not like I had you know the the senior person on the team that had you know all these years of indust IND industry experience words are hard um and you know we could all just look up to them and learn and all these things and they were very applicable a lot of the times we would even have senior people that would come into the company with many more

years of experience than me but because they hadn't navigated the sort of things that we were doing and arguably I don't know I'm not going to say like they're bad Engineers or anything like that not the case I just mean their ability to I don't know provide lessons and mentorship that is applicable maybe didn't work as well or fitting as well there were sometimes where we'd have senior people come in and I'm like your your experience is actually not helpful in this regard and there were other people that were significantly more Junior that were kind of pushing boundaries in different ways that it was like there's a lot more that I can learn from that person right the I'm trying to think of a good example uh I know that you know people that come from bigger companies into startups like it's usually process and

process isn't necessarily had but sometimes these people would um the only thing they knew was process and they would try to to fit it in at a time where we absolutely did not need it now my bias of course being in the startup that's growing is to have a bias for things like against process of course um because we're like hey we have less of it and it seems to be working well we we stay agile and at some point some amount is helpful but people would come in and like basically try to change everything thing or expect that we do and it's like that's just not going to be a a fit we have to look at the lessons that process introduces and if that's going to be valuable so we can apply it so to go back to the mentorship part like in

my case the more senior people not often were providing that kind of thing and it would either be honestly like peers or you know it could be people that were you know arguably more Junior to me where I'm learning a lot from them so it looked different right it wasn't that I have a mentor that I can go call up and get on my my weekly or monthly 101 with and you know ask them career advice and all this kind of stuff um I might say like the closest thing to a mentor would have been my HR manager HR director and um and even for her look at this guy like you just that's the Lane change I've ever seen you basically cut me off without a signal okay um but my interactions with her are less about my uh specific like how to progress

my career from her experience because she might not have and that might not be a fair statement I was going to say maybe like because she hasn't been through it before but you know she she is a people leader she's seen progression and stuff like that so yeah maybe arguably my age director would have been like the closest thing to my mentor but in terms of like understanding I want to think of a better example here I think the person writing in is probably saying like I don't have someone who's mentoring me like as a software engineer and I think that's what I'm trying to relate to I never had that either but I had my my team members that were also you know passionate about what we were doing learning uh and and sharing their learning right it was like it was very open

so that you know one team was trying something and it's like that's not working or it is working like we're going to share that knowledge and we're going to learn from it um but yeah going back to my HR Director she would have been someone probably giving me mentorship as a like especially on the people side of things right how do you navigate people things and as a manager that's obviously a very important part that might not feel as applicable for some individuals watching if you're like okay individual contributor my mentor is going to be the HR person like uh that doesn't feel that doesn't feel good or that doesn't feel that useful uh for me as a manager yeah I I guess I have to go back on my statement a little bit she would have been the closest thing to a mentor there

um and I did learn a lot from her so it would have been on the people side of things though so if the concern uh I kind of want to think about some actionable things here because I got about 5 minutes before I'm at the gym um I would say like no don't be concerned I would say if you feel like you're in an environment where you're learning a lot and you're like constantly learning and it's it feels like things that are are valuable like if you feel like you're learning a lot but you're like I don't know how I would ever use this or where the value is uh maybe it isn't as valuable but if you're like hey this is all good learning I'm learning a lot uh it's challenging it's like an ongoing thing uh I would say like that's a great

environment to be in you don't NE necessarily need uh a mentor to tell you that kind of stuff now beyond that right like there's nothing that says that you need mentorship to come from a specific person right it could be multiple people it could be people that aren't at work with you right if you really feel like you need an individual that you can um you can reach out to and have mentorship that kind of thing uh there's an accountability aspect I think for a lot of people like when I was doing bodybuilding I would still hire a coach not because I had no idea how to lift weights or uh look at my nutrition but I had accountability to someone and for some individuals a mentor might provide that which then is a very good reason if you're like hey I need the accountability

aspect then by all means I would say Seek out a mentor but they don't have to be an individual person they don't have to be on your team or even at the company you're at and sometimes having someone that's external can be very helpful and if you have multiple people that are external that could be helpful too right mentorship can come in all different shapes and sizes and I think that's the kind of thing that I want to drive home here um so like unfortunately I don't have a mentorship Services I think if uh if I wasn't working full-time then that might be a thing I open up but uh I don't have like I already do this through work right and I don't have capacity outside of work with everything else I'm doing otherwise I would absolutely just offer it as a service and

say great um but uh I would feel very bad not having proper um time allocation and you know sort of the mental capacity to to Mentor others so unfortunately what that means is that I just make these videos that's the closest thing I have to mentorship at a larger scale but um I would say it's you probably want to understand like or at least give this a thought right like where do you feel like there are um are there are gaps and that might be a weird question to ask yourself but like do you feel like you're uh like on the technical side like things are good because I was talking about challenges and learning opportunities like do you feel like you're getting that and if so like where do you feel like the gaps are is it more about like okay uh I don't

really understand career progression or I would like better understanding of it if so what you could do is try to seek out someone that has gone through this kind of thing right uh try to find someone I mean it doesn't have to be like this but uh I like to think about it as someone that has successfully done what you've done or want to do my apologies and there was a if you guys know who Alex Heros is he's a content creator and pretty wealthy individual um he had a really good way to put it but he had like this tiered list of like four or five things but basically it was like uh you know someone that's done what you want to do and has successfully coached others in doing so as well uh is probably the ideal person to look for but um

it doesn't have to be a dedicated one-on-one like recurring thing uh and it can always start as something much smaller right having conversations with someone uh reaching out on social media getting some messages and stuff exchanged then over time you build up that relationship so if you don't feel like you have that in your place of work that's not the end of the world um because number one you may be getting some of that that learning and growth through your peers and through the work that you are doing and that could be excellent and if you want something more than that even if it's not available at work it's still going be something that you seek out in addition so uh this is just a short video I hope that helpful I'm just pulling into the CrossFit parking lot and I'm the kind of person

that when I'm driving in a busy spot my other senses don't work because I'm trying to to look and listen so I yes I turn down the music and stuff when I go to park that kind of thing see my wife is here and there's a parking spot beside my wife did she leave me enough space she did wow thank you wife we park right beside the X5 this is the other code commute vehicle sometimes I can't see how far back things go probably right about there is good cool okay hope that's helpful um mentorship looks different for everyone and uh startup stuff is very fast-paced so hope you enjoy and I'll see you next time