Whether that be a formal mentor within the company or you have found a mentor outside the company.

e.g. I want to level up as an engineer, have sought out a mentor(s) to help me do so, what are some of the things I should make sure happen that I get the most benefit out of the relationship.

How do you get the most out of mentorship?

Gopuff is an American consumer goods and food delivery company headquartered in Philadelphia. The company operates in over 650 US cities through approximately 500 microfulfillment centers as of October 2021, and was valued at $15B.

Gopuff

Entry-Level Software Engineer

Great question! One very simple way to view a mentorship relationship is to envision it as the following goal: *I want to get as much constructive feedback from my mentor as possible*.

So how can you get that feedback? Well first, you need to "expose" your mentor to mediums where they can come up with ideas for your feedback:
- Put them on your pull requests as a code reviewer
- Have them in meetings where you're an active participant, especially if you are leading the meeting
- Have a recurring 1:1 meeting with them (I generally recommend bi-weekly or weekly)
- cc them on technical writing that you do (project updates, technical design documents)
- cc them when you are reviewing the code of others. Example: "I feel like this code could be cleaner if it were refactored into a utility method, does this also make sense to you @mentor?"

After that, 2 scenarios can happen. The mentor can either give you feedback *proactively* without you prompting it (ideal, but may not happen) or you will need to ask them for the feedback and they will *react* with it. For the 2nd scenario, here are my thoughts:
- The recurring 1:1 meeting is the best time to ask for feedback
- Make it clear to your mentor that you treat all feedback as a gift and really value their honesty. This will allow you to have awkward, but effective, 1 on 1s (more context in a link below).
- **Make your asks for feedback as specific as possible** - Don't just ask "Do you have any feedback for me?". That's such a broad question that it's super easy for someone to just zone out and just reply with the easy response of "Nope, you're doing great!". I personally self-deprecate a little bit when probing for feedback to make getting it easier. Example: "I feel like the way I approached building this interface was pretty janky, but I couldn't find a cleaner way - What do you think?"

*Another core aspect behind an effective mentor <-> mentee relationship (like with any relationship) is the level of trust between the 2 of you*. I could write a whole book about building trust, but something tactical you can do is spend non-work/tactical time with your mentor. The simplest thing to do is to go out to lunch together (though this is admittedly way harder if you're both remote). If you really want to get to know your mentor, try spending time after work with them. My first mentee and I got along extremely well, because we did this - They would often times invite me to play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate after work and stuff like that.

Related resources:
- [How To Sharpen Unspecific Feedback](https://link.jointaro.com/Y2gx27UBQQC2Gr4x7)
- [Some Additional Thoughts On Finding A Mentor That Fits You](https://link.jointaro.com/nW3bnpvZk8FWqPjS8)
- [1:1 Meetings Should Be Awkward](https://link.jointaro.com/3bfHbXJnitU158rr5)

Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal

Alex Chiou

Re - Alex: the way you suggested for having and effective mentor-mentee relationship is very demanding on the mentor side, to be seeked for feedback on code reviews and writings, and join meetings as well. I wonder if this has happened before in Meta where you worked before? We do have internal mentorship programs, but I never thought of these as an option for the mentor to ask them for. 

Senior Software Engineer [E5] at Meta

Sara Morsy

There's more to working in tech than just shipping software. It's vital for your career to build deep professional relationships and make real friends at work, especially if you're looking to grow to senior levels.

This collection represents the best of what Taro has to offer, personally curated by Alex and Rahul. If you're short on time, go through the content here.

Almost every software engineer starts their full-time career journey here. The content here breaks down how you can start your career off with a splash and grow past this level as quickly as possible.

Tech has so much to learn, making learning how to learn one of the most important things for any software engineer to do. Figure out what you need to do to pick up new skills quickly and properly.

Mentorship is the influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. A mentor is someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person.

How do you get the most out of mentorship?

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