4 ms·

One underrated way to be a 10x contributor is to mentor others to make 5-10 of your 1-2x self, not including the compounding benefits that accrue as those you m

by nrb 7y ago

One underrated way to be a 10x contributor is to mentor others to make 5-10 of your 1-2x self, not including the compounding benefits that accrue as those you mentored begin to do the same (having themselves realized the value of mentorship).

scarface74 7y ago
And you won’t last too long if your role in the company is to crank out code and not be a mentor. You don’t have to be an official lead, you could even be lead on a project or “single responsible individual”.
- daxfohl 7y ago
  That's going a little far. I work with plenty of people who have no desire to do anything but crank out code and have been doing so for 20+ years. The promotion path is slower for sure, but nobody is throwing out a great developer just because.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I have no problem with people who just want to crank out code, but if you spend half your time “mentoring” and not cranking out code, how will that look on your performance review? I’m officially an individual contributor at a smallish software company (20-25 developers) and while I don’t “mentor” junior developers I do have a slightly louder voice when it comes to architectural and infrastructure decisions just because of my experience (I’m a recovering dev lead from another company). But I fight every week with a project manager who is just interested in getting stories complete when everyone looks to me to answer infrastructure/AWS questions - including CxOs.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
    I think scarface74 is right. At my last job, it was clear from the job descriptions that certain people (like me) were expected to spend a substantial amount of time mentoring, leading and working on higher-level tasks, and others were expected to primarily code. IIRC, the pie chart showed that I was only expected to code around 15% of my time. But that was because the organization realized that after a certain point, the knowledge of the senior developers was best used to bring up the level of the team rather than just crank out code. If you're a dev who's expected to basically produce code all day long but you decide you'd rather spend your time helping others, you shouldn't be surprised when you take a hit on your performance review. This isn't a problem with the organization, per se. It's a problem with a dev deciding to do something other than what he's expected to be doing.

by nrb 7y ago

scarface74 7y ago

And you won’t last too long if your role in the company is to crank out code and not be a mentor. You don’t have to be an official lead, you could even be lead on a project or “single responsible individual”.

daxfohl 7y ago
That's going a little far. I work with plenty of people who have no desire to do anything but crank out code and have been doing so for 20+ years. The promotion path is slower for sure, but nobody is throwing out a great developer just because.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I have no problem with people who just want to crank out code, but if you spend half your time “mentoring” and not cranking out code, how will that look on your performance review? I’m officially an individual contributor at a smallish software company (20-25 developers) and while I don’t “mentor” junior developers I do have a slightly louder voice when it comes to architectural and infrastructure decisions just because of my experience (I’m a recovering dev lead from another company). But I fight every week with a project manager who is just interested in getting stories complete when everyone looks to me to answer infrastructure/AWS questions - including CxOs.
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  I think scarface74 is right. At my last job, it was clear from the job descriptions that certain people (like me) were expected to spend a substantial amount of time mentoring, leading and working on higher-level tasks, and others were expected to primarily code. IIRC, the pie chart showed that I was only expected to code around 15% of my time. But that was because the organization realized that after a certain point, the knowledge of the senior developers was best used to bring up the level of the team rather than just crank out code. If you're a dev who's expected to basically produce code all day long but you decide you'd rather spend your time helping others, you shouldn't be surprised when you take a hit on your performance review. This isn't a problem with the organization, per se. It's a problem with a dev deciding to do something other than what he's expected to be doing.