Launch of JuniorDev SG's Mentoring Programme
📅 August 23, 2019
•⏱️3 min read
Introduction
When I was starting out to be part of the industry about 2 years ago.
Books, podcast, online courses and youtube videos were my sources of inspiration and education.
Where I learnt to pick up Django development and other developer practices.
Lack of Support Group for Junior Developers
At that point of time, there wasn't much developer group catered specifically towards Junior Developers in Singapore.
Who is looking to be part of the developer community in Singapore to share their struggles and grow to become a better developer.
To hopefully one day, to help to upgrade these developers to become tech leads.
To help future developers and drive technology development in our little red dot.
Sure there was 3 - 4 coding bootcamps being set up to help relieve the developer shortage and retraining of retrenched PMET to become developers.
I feel it was unable to address the needs of Junior Developers who are graduating from Universities, coding boot camps or self-taught developers.
Mentorship is Key for Junior Developer
Despite I had drawn the bulk of my technical knowledge and developer practices from online sources and books.
The bulk of my growth came from the watchful eyes of my Mentor Mr Kenny Liew in MentorsHub.
Who had given me hard knocks in the head & suggestions to allow me to break into the local startup ecosystem as a developer.
Launch of JuniorDev SG Mentoring Programme
After the initial feedback from our pilot batch, I would like to announce on our launch of JuniorDev SG Mentoring Programme.
We conducted our first session last Wednesday at SP Digital.
Who had graciously provided us with the sponsorship of both food and venue to conduct our mentoring programme.
Themes In Each Session
For the mentoring programme, the mentors had selected 6 themes during our brainstorming session.
Which we believe could help junior developers grow and level up their capabilities as a developer to build software that provides value for their users.
- Career Path - To help the mentee to select their own specialisation and find their own career path as a developer.
- Soft Skills - Learning of soft skills that are relevant to operate within a software team or cross-functional teams to deliver software or just to be a human.
- How to Accelerate Learning - Tips and tricks to help improve one's understanding of new technology, methodology or concepts to be relevant in the industry.
- Understanding Business Environment - To understand business goals, objectives, managing expectations with clients or partners, creating software to delivery of value to the users.
- Interview Preparation - To help the mentees to be better prepared for the technical challenges given by companies and interview skills to land into the jobs that they want.
- Burnout & Imposter Syndrome - To identify burnout & imposter syndrome with tips and tricks to hopefully deal with it and prevent themselves from being burnout from work or life.
Conclusion
I hope to share more of our collective insights and understanding after each mentoring session to help future junior developers or just to provide a mentorship framework for their own junior developer around the world.