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I agree with you on what a manager who doesn't know what they're looking at should do there. You gotta dig in and find out![0] I've been fortunate recently to

I agree with you on what a manager who doesn't know what they're looking at should do there. You gotta dig in and find out![0] I've been fortunate recently to not work in orgs where mentoring and collaborating like that is looked down upon - instead, it's encouraged - but my ongoing struggle is to figure out how to quantify it. I've got two similar but distinct motivations for wanting to quantify it: * If I have a manager who looks less favorably on it, I want to be able to demonstrate my worth; but also, * If I'm spending most of my time trying to mentor the rest of the team, I want to see how well I'm doing - and I want to be able to change things and see if it results in positive or negative changes Sadly I've completely failed at coming up with how to quantify this so far. It all comes down to qualitative peer feedback/manager feedback... [0] As a technical person, I try to practice the reverse of this: if someone asks for a feature or claims there's a bug, I try to dig until I fully understand why they're asking for what they're asking. So I think asking for similar curiosity and depth from a non-technical person is fair.

seneca 6y ago
Well, just spit balling, but you should see it in team velocity. The effort you're spending coaching should show up in the output of your team members. Assuming there's some kind of constant ongoing engagement with one person or group, I'd expect an immediate dip in velocity as your productivity goes elsewhere, then it growing, and maybe evening out to before-engagement numbers (approximately), as they reap the benefits of learning from a senior engineer. Then, as you're able to return to normal duties and they're able to apply the lessons, you should see velocity greater than before the engagement. That delta should be somewhat quantifiable and, ignoring other variables, should represent the benefits of coaching. There's also huge value in the increased job satisfaction for both mentor who enjoys mentoring, and a mentee who is learning. That should show up in any kind of employee satisfaction survey, or retention numbers.

seneca 6y ago

Well, just spit balling, but you should see it in team velocity. The effort you're spending coaching should show up in the output of your team members. Assuming there's some kind of constant ongoing engagement with one person or group, I'd expect an immediate dip in velocity as your productivity goes elsewhere, then it growing, and maybe evening out to before-engagement numbers (approximately), as they reap the benefits of learning from a senior engineer. Then, as you're able to return to normal duties and they're able to apply the lessons, you should see velocity greater than before the engagement. That delta should be somewhat quantifiable and, ignoring other variables, should represent the benefits of coaching. There's also huge value in the increased job satisfaction for both mentor who enjoys mentoring, and a mentee who is learning. That should show up in any kind of employee satisfaction survey, or retention numbers.