I've been doing continued work with an exciting client. The previous thing we did together was a solid win in delivering before the deadline, a bit beyond spec and with good feelings all around. Current project is more involved and I've been probing the depths of what needs to be done.

With a solid project in my grip I currently only have openings for a few mentorship clients right now. Get in touch if you think this would be something for you or a business you know.

Podcast recommendation: Focused

This podcast was previously known as Free Agents and I honestly preferred it when it was. But that's because I do freelancing and they were talking specifically about that. I discovered it while I was just starting my business. The backlog covered a wide range of topics that I found useful while getting started, almost like having someone to talk to about what I was thinking in regards to my own business.

Mike and David (and previously Jason) talk about productivity, self-accountability, pacing and finding a sustainable way of managing yourself professionally. When I was binging it I found the podcast very useful and it has introduced me to a lot of ideas and other podcasts that have just led me to better tools, better patterns and better thinking about how to tackle the day-to-day things that we all need to get done. It goes well beyond "Top ten tips for 10x-ing your day" or whatever. I'd say it has a healthy perspective on productivity.

Junior developers?

When I was running a development agency with friends we were trying to recruit people that weren't too junior. That was always a problem. Finding people who weren't junior.

We weren't alone either. Anyone that seemed to have any experience was worth their weight in gold and anyone that was new was considered an untested liability and probably wasn't worthwhile.

Is that reasonable? I've worked with experienced devs that I'm not sure I'd hire. I've worked with inexperienced devs that could blow me out of the water on certain topics from sheer enthusiasm. Recruiting experienced people is certainly more likely to be a safe bet. But what are the trade-offs?

Recruitment time goes way up when recruiting for experience because there is incredible demand and a dwindling and picky supply of senior developers out there. Cost goes way up because the more experienced devs generally know to play the market and simply have higher salaries or are firmly lodged and require strong incentives to move.

And does it achieve your goal? You may even end up having too many heavily opinionated tech lead type people in one team compared to what you need to get stuff done.

The challenge I see is to tap the potential of the junior developers coming out of bootcamps, universities, courses and classes all over the place. They will be inexperienced, their skills may be rough. I think you'll definitely need some experience on the team to make it happen.

But. I think you can get enough developers to do the work if you're willing to recruit what is actually available. The young and inexperienced, the old and re-skilled. You just need a plan for bringing them aboard and making sure they have the practical skills they need to succeed at what you and your business is doing. Most programming doesn't require someone extremely clever or sagely experienced. It just requires someone thinking, typing things, testing, swearing and then trying again. Most development is not as fancy as we pretend that it is.

It also seems to me that I find a wider array of experiences when dealing with devs that have not done tech forever. You get people re-schooling from other careers and different walks of life which gives a certain depth of experience that can be incredibly rare and useful in a business. A diverse team tends to be a stronger and more resilient team.

I think there is a great need for professional mentorship in programming and tech. There is an incredible variety of tech stacks, environments and details to pick up and you have to start somewhere. When I encounter a new client and the particulars of their stacks I'll ask them to run me through it. Sure, I've experiences to inform me and can make do with less guidance to get up to speed but you bet I'll request someone to get me up and running.

The person on-boarding me steps into the role of a mentor. They share their knowledge, guide me on my way and they remove roadblocks to allow my work to pick up steam and get working. This form of the relationship usually ends as we get up to speed. I think newly arrived devs often benefit from a longer and clearly stated mentorship relationship.

A mentorship gives space for discussion, questions and the search of knowledge. Ideally it also provides guidance, a touch of accountability and a source of understanding. Sometimes we all need a “yeah, I’ve been there, that’s rough” or some “I can never remember this particular syntax”. Some of it is technical knowledge and the skills of the craft. But so much is about having access to another human that understands what you are doing or trying to do. And I think quite a few businesses succeed because they do this and I think very few businesses realize that this is something they do or could do.

I would appreciate if you would share some of your stories about mentorship with me. I’m genuinely curious about what kind of mentors you’ve had and what the importance of them have been. Mine have been incredibly important and I believe I’ll share stories about them as we go.

Have a good weekend now.

- Lars Wikman