YOU can be a mentor for the next cohort of Android engineers Sumayyah Ahmed

about me Github: https://github.com/sumayyah LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sumayyah-ahmed

2013

2015

Now Monolith -> modules Java -> Kotlin Callbacks -> RxJava -> Coroutines MVP -> MVI -> MVVM

common theme

And I’m guessing that’s where a lot of you are today.

let’s get tactical 1) YOU can be a mentor ● How every engineer, at every level, can be a mentor to others ● How to find mentees; how to find topics to mentor on; how to get career benefits out of it 2) For the next cohort of Android engineers ● Why the Android community really needs mentoring ● How to have impact outside of your company

we all have knowledge to share

we need it for career growth “it” = the ability to impact a large number of people positively

how do we get started?

Formal 1-1 Up-down Learning relationship Formal 1-1 Up-down Learning relationship

look laterally, not down Utilize peers as a network of learning and teaching opportunities peer mentoring

what does peer mentoring look like? ● Onboarding a new hire, at any level ● Distributing knowledge on something new: a library, framework, architecture, practice, etc ● Creating learning groups for one-to-many or many-to-many learning ○ Study groups ○ Presentations/Brown bags Key: do it consistently, regularly, from a deep well of knowledge/area expertise

what can I teach? Find the gaps How is knowledge processed in the team? How does it accumulate? How is it disseminated? Through what channels, and via which people? What gaps are there between technical needs and current skill sets? What is your team makeup currently like?

The institutional knowledge problem Who learns it first? Who becomes the subject matter expert?

This is a great opportunity for peer mentoring

find knowledge gaps then build bridges

Outcome: you have impact!

Now we’re doing glue work All the non-coding work that goes into making effective and productive tech teams https://noidea.dog/glue =

Be careful of the “glue work” problem

find relevant topics Mentor on things that move the needle for your team

getting credit ● Set expectations with your manager ● Define your mentoring work in terms of impact and results ○ Ok: I spent time working with X and Y on unit tests ○ Better: Because I spent time working with X and Y on unit tests, our juniors can now write te with every PR and our test coverage is going up ● Make your impact visible ○ Write it in your end of year reviews ● Maintain flexibility - you don’t have to mentor all the time in every season ○ It’s a constantly developing skill set

broadening impact

challenges facing Android engineers today Android is a tough field to break into!

so many ways to do things! ● Aka viewbinding - Butterknife? Kotlin synthetics? Android viewbinding? ● Theming ● Which Activity to use?

incomplete learning resources ● Lack of documentation ● Out of date resources ○ unclear best practices in online resources

No content

a lot of institutional knowledge - and devs not hired yet don’t have access to that either!

There is no easy pipeline to becoming an Android engineer - Which means not enough of us!

Android developers Web development Bootcamps Product CS programs

mentoring is not just optional but necessary

how to impact engineers outside your company ● GDG ● Local meetups and local tech bootcamps ● Online communities (Droidcon online, WWCode Mobile) ● Blog or speak ● Deliberately make yourself available to others ○ Be humble and open to learning

Anyone, at any level, can develop mentoring skills Mentoring has an outsize impact on the industry Mentoring requires deliberate intention and effort

Resources Florian Mierzejewski: Becoming a mentor, why and how? - droidcon Tanya Reilly: Being Glue — No Idea Blog