How to Grow Your Own Juniors: A Guide to Mentoring in an Elixir Environment

Junior Elixir Developers Meks McClure and Nikki Kyllonen reflect on their first year and share tips for onboarding new Elixir developers at ElixirConf 2022.

Transcript

1. How to Grow Your Own Juniors A Guide to Mentoring in an Elixir Environment
2. Nikki Kyllonen (she/her) (they/them) nkyllonen MMcClure11 Meks McClure
3. The 3 Stages of Growth Prepping the Soil Planting the Seed Nurturing the Seedling
4. Prepping the Soil
5. 1. General workplace suggestions 2. Getting ready for Day 1 Getting the environment set up for a junior to join. Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
6. • Synchronous ◦ Record pairing sessions • Asynchronous ◦ Short 5-10 minute videos • Upload recordings to centralized location Knowledge Sharing Photo by Fredrik Ivansson on Unsplash
7. • Culture of question-asking • Dedicated spaces for questions ◦ #helping-hands ◦ #programming ◦ #everyone-makes-mistakes Safe Space for Questions Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash
8. • Primary point of contact • Set project expectations: ◦ Lower availability ◦ Lower velocity Establish Your Mentors Photo by Emm & Enn on Unsplash
9. The Slide Deck • Fundamental concepts • Live coding examples • Project-relevant topics Photo by Maddy Baker on Unsplash
10. The Sandbox Project • Safe space to practice • Make it fun! Photo by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash
11. The Sandbox Project Photo by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash NEEDS NICE-TO-HAVES • Project structure • Project testing practices* • PR approval process • Design tool • Team task tracking
12. Planting the Seed
13. Onboarding your new hire. 1. The first week 2. Important concepts to cover Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash
14. The First Week DAY 1 DAY 2 DAYS 3-5 Setup Sandbox project Pairing |>
15. • ~6 hour session • Set up dev env, tools and credentials • Slide presentation • Share resources Day 1 DAY 1 Setup
16. • ~6 hour session • Junior drives • Record for easy review • Gauge understanding DAY 2 Sandbox project |> Day 2
17. DAYS 3-5 • ~4 hours of pairing • Alternate who drives • Independent exploration Pairing Days 3-5
18. Important Concepts for Onboarding Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
19. Basic Types 1. Strings, booleans, integers, floats 2. Atoms Photo by Mona Eendra on Unsplash
20. Collections • Maps • Lists • Tuples • Keyword lists Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash
21. Modules OOP vs Functional Programming [3, 2, 1].sort [1, 2, 3] Enum.sort([3, 2, 1]) [1, 2, 3] RUB Y ELIXIR
22. The Mighty Pipe Operator ✨ ✨
23. Control Structures • if / else / unlesss • cases • conds
24. Fewer conditionals, MOAR FUNCTIONS …with guard clauses Photo by Hunt Han on Unsplash
25. When in doubt, write a function. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
26. Pattern Matching • Match operator .=. • Function heads
27. LiveView • New and rapidly changing • Teach using the project version Photo by Christopher Cassidy on Unsplash
28. Testing Practices • General testing principles • Introduce your team’s testing strategy End-to-End Integration Tests Unit Tests Photo by Sander Mathlener on Unsplash
29. Beware Information Overload • Prepare to repeat yourself • Repeated exposure is important Photo by Ripley Elisabeth Brown on Unsplash
30. Topics that can be delayed • Pin operator .^. • Capture operator .&. • Tail recursion • .with.
31. Nurturing the Seedling
32. Nurturing the Seedling After the first week. Photo by Cristiano Valadar on Unsplash
33. Onboard to Active Project • Small bug fixes • Components • Recreate or alter existing feature • Grow and manage existing feature Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash
34. Code Review Practices • Growth mindset • Learning opportunities Photo by Alexx Cooper on Unsplash
35. What makes a code review helpful? • Link documentation • Be overly prescriptive • Make an async video of your review • Live review Photo by Alexx Cooper on Unsplash
36. • Weekly junior/senior sync • Regular 1:1 check-ins ◦ Adjust support ◦ Performance feedback Mentorship Evolves with the Junior Photo by David Ballew on Unsplash
37. • the growth of the individual. • your team. • your company. • the Elixir community. Your Juniors are an Investment in… Photo by Sergey Shmidt on Unsplash
38. Thank you! Meks McClure (they/them) Nikki Kyllonen (she/her)