Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Lessons in Mentorship
Search
Eric Hodel
March 06, 2015
Education
1
200
Lessons in Mentorship
A presentation on technical mentoring skills given at Ruby on Ales 2015
Eric Hodel
March 06, 2015
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Eric Hodel
See All by Eric Hodel
Building maintainable command-line tools with MRuby
drbrain
0
630
Introduction to Rake
drbrain
0
310
Lazy Enumeration
drbrain
0
110
Open Source Maintenance — Ruby on Ales 2014
drbrain
1
110
Open Source Maintenance — RailsClub Moscow
drbrain
1
150
drbdump
drbrain
2
480
Other Decks in Education
See All in Education
20250611_なんでもCopilot1年続いたぞ~
ponponmikankan
0
120
OpenSourceSummitJapanを運営してみた話
kujiraitakahiro
0
730
推しのコミュニティはなんぼあってもいい / Let's join a lot of communities.
kaga
2
1.8k
Dashboards - Lecture 11 - Information Visualisation (4019538FNR)
signer
PRO
1
2.1k
技術文章を書くための執筆技術と実践法(パラグラフライティング)
hisashiishihara
19
6.6k
実務プログラム
takenawa
0
8k
演習問題
takenawa
0
8k
万博非公式マップとFOSS4G
barsaka2
0
470
American Airlines® USA Contact Numbers: The Ultimate 2025 Guide
lievliev
0
240
Data Physicalisation - Lecture 9 - Next Generation User Interfaces (4018166FNR)
signer
PRO
0
450
OpenRobomaster 中国のロボットコンテスト 日本連携の可能性
takasumasakazu
0
460
2025年度春学期 統計学 第10回 分布の推測とは ー 標本調査,度数分布と確率分布 (2025. 6. 12)
akiraasano
PRO
0
160
Featured
See All Featured
Responsive Adventures: Dirty Tricks From The Dark Corners of Front-End
smashingmag
251
21k
GraphQLの誤解/rethinking-graphql
sonatard
71
11k
Imperfection Machines: The Place of Print at Facebook
scottboms
267
13k
Designing for Performance
lara
610
69k
Understanding Cognitive Biases in Performance Measurement
bluesmoon
29
1.8k
Easily Structure & Communicate Ideas using Wireframe
afnizarnur
194
16k
The Psychology of Web Performance [Beyond Tellerrand 2023]
tammyeverts
48
2.9k
Fight the Zombie Pattern Library - RWD Summit 2016
marcelosomers
233
17k
[RailsConf 2023 Opening Keynote] The Magic of Rails
eileencodes
29
9.6k
Unsuck your backbone
ammeep
671
58k
KATA
mclloyd
30
14k
Principles of Awesome APIs and How to Build Them.
keavy
126
17k
Transcript
Lessons in Mentorship Eric Hodel @drbrain
None
None
Technical mentoring
Career mentoring
Help teach technical skills
Programming
Algorithm
“Programs must be written for people to read, and only
incidentally for machines to execute” —SICP
Communication
Touching
Build muscle memory
Show, don’t do
Ask only when necessary
Listen
Build Understanding
Recognize your assumptions
Ask Questions
Leading questions
Demonstrate debugging techniques
Learning First
Digressions second
K.I.S.S.
Avoid distraction
“I don’t know”
There are two kinds of knowledge: the kind that's “obvious”,
and the kind we haven't acquired yet. https://twitter.com/ReinH/status/488225181723525120
“This weekend I was reminded how complex (and in some
cases, convoluted) typical test setup is for Rails applications.” Justin Searls http://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2015-02-16-arcane-knowledge.html
“One engineering mindset that has gotten in my way is
the thought that I will never ‘catch up on’ what other people already know.” Emily Claire Reese http://blog.eclairereese.com/post/110897066911/playing-catch-up
Understanding then Criticism
Understand why
Most important first
Let it Slide
Good > Perfect
Build confidence
Safe Spaces
Remove traps
Manage Frustration
Pay attention to feelings
Take breaks
Leave them alone
Thinking Tools
Draw pictures
Physical analogues
Search skills
Cultivate Good Behavior
Testing
Documentation
Commit practices
Code review
Time Estimation
Task scoping
Newbs
Equals collaborating
Culture of Sharing
Share credit
Defer to experts
Apologize
Touching
Talking over
Misunderstand
Acknowledge mistakes
Use these skills
Onboarding
Learning a new system
Working with juniors
Code school TA
Increase Happiness
“Talking with [Eric] was like that car ride in The
Matrix,
where they're telling you all this really cool stuff about
the world
and you wouldn't have got to know it by yourself.
But then you get pushed out of the car
and you're in some part of town you've never been
to
and you have no idea how to walk home.
I will say, since then Eric has taken a lot
more care in packing a lunch for me, and pinning my mittens to my coat so I don't lose them.” Elizabeth Uselton
Contributors •Liz Rush •Cat Useleton •Elizabeth Uselton •Hsing-Hui Hsu •Fastly
•Ada Developers Academy Students
Thanks