“Things break. It’s inevitable,” said Nicole Yu, principal software engineer at Bliss Point Media.
“Most engineers have a fear of making a mistake — working on a piece of code that isn’t 100 percent correct, causing something to fail. This can be paralyzing and slow down productivity.”
While teams can do their best to build frameworks that reduce chances of failure, Yu noted that great mentorship can increase an engineer’s confidence. She works toward empowering the engineers she mentors to take a solutions-driven approach when a problem arises. It’s not about aiming to completely avoid mistakes; it’s about knowing how to address them, quickly and efficiently, when they do happen.
At Aspiration, an environmentally conscious fintech company, engineers are encouraged to take a solutions-driven approach by working directly with their peers. Charlie McElfresh, director of platform engineering, explained that members of the team each take the lead as the sprint captain, no matter their level of experience. This necessitates asking questions and working with other team members to find solutions to challenges. This peer-mentorship opportunity increases both an engineer’s knowledge and decision-making confidence.
Built In Los Angeles sat down with Yu and McElfresh, as well as leaders from Pennymac and SimplePractice, to learn more about the role mentorship plays in developing their engineering teams and enabling them to thrive — even if mistakes sometimes happen.
Pennymac builds modern technology solutions for mortgage professionals so that they can provide best-in-class customer experiences. “Each engineer operates within their domain of expertise, where they are free to explore new and current technologies, techniques and practices that will expand their knowledge and contribute to success,” said Gennadiy Karasev, SVP of technology infrastructure. “As these domains shift over time, the team continues to grow and adapt.”
What’s a practice your team follows that encourages a culture of mentorship and knowledge-sharing?
Teams are encouraged to collaborate with one another in order to achieve their goals. Meeting together daily, engineers share updates and host discussions on what they’ve learned. A simple question about a process, system or technology always spurs an impromptu conversation or a whiteboard session, creating a place where insightful knowledge is gained and new ideas are born.
How do you serve as a mentor to members of your team?
I have a passion for learning and like to lead by example. I want my engineers to feel comfortable sharing and asking questions, with the goal of expanding their knowledge. In the fast-paced AWS environment, I am also constantly learning thanks to ongoing technical discussions with my team members who spend a lot more time immersed in the day-to-day development work.
How has a mentorship culture helped your team grow?
Our mentorship culture has allowed our youngest engineers to develop their skill set at incredible rates. By promoting an open environment for new ideas, individuals are empowered to expand their knowledge and careers. It has also helped bridge the gap between engineers from different generations, enabling them to find common ground and work seamlessly together.
Our mentorship culture has helped bridge the gap between engineers from different generations, enabling them to find common ground and work seamlessly together.”
Aspiration is an environmentally minded fintech company providing customers with ways to spend and save while fighting climate change. Engineers work on the framework and design of the company’s native mobile and web platforms that facilitate customers’ financial transactions and inquiries. “Every engineer at every level is right in the middle of the action,” said Charlie McElfresh, director of platform engineering. “Each of us can point to our apps and say, ‘I helped make that.’”
What’s a practice your team follows that encourages a culture of mentorship and knowledge-sharing?
We value what each new engineer brings to the team — first as a person, second as an engineer. We are here to help each other succeed, and we prove it by providing clear career paths and promoting from within. If the subject matter of a task is new to someone, they’re encouraged to ask for help. Once they learn it, they can teach it to someone else.
If the subject matter of a task is new to someone, they’re encouraged to ask for help. Once they learn it, they can teach it to someone else.”
How do you serve as a mentor to members of your team?
I’ve learned that I find great joy in participating in my teammates’ successes. I find software engineering to be extremely challenging and rewarding, and it is a thrill for me to see the lights come on as they learn new skills and help each other.
Every two weeks, an engineer takes a turn as the sprint captain who takes the helm of all the duties that would likely fall on managers or leads in other organizations. No matter how experienced you are, this will take you a little bit out of your comfort zone — but this is where the magic is. Team-building takes place when the sprint captain asks for help, and that person becomes naturally eager to help the next sprint captain.
How has a mentorship culture helped your team grow?
The programming language Go is a big step forward for many engineers, and learning it is challenging and exciting. Go is strongly typed, compiled, portable to every major operating system and highly performant. Nearly everything required to write any back end service is in its standard library and is documented and supported in a handful of excellent source materials.
There are not many experienced Go engineers, and so we hire engineers who are willing to learn Go. While it’s simple to learn, it’s difficult to become proficient, so we mentor each other.
This opportunity to learn, mentor and be mentored has attracted other engineers — many of us, including myself, were referred to the company by a friend or colleague.
SimplePractice powers a healthtech platform that helps wellness professionals seamlessly run their practice with secure online intake, scheduling and billing. “Once a team member joins the team, they go through a comprehensive training program that provides exposure to how our customers operate their business and explains the role we play,” said Noah Fisher, senior director of engineering.
What’s a practice your team follows that encourages a culture of mentorship and knowledge-sharing?
I like to visualize our success as three intersecting loops:
Loop one is the people we hire. We hire kind, intelligent and passionate people to join our mission-driven company, which creates an environment where people consistently show up in big ways. For example, the often-dreaded “coding challenge” during an interview is approached as a pair-programming session that’s designed to be collaborative.
Loop two is our day-to-day processes. Our engineering group has found ways to embed and automate mentorship, and we’ve spent a great deal of time optimizing our continuous integration and continuous delivery pipeline with a focus on developer productivity. Peer code reviews and reviews from our QA team keep our change failure rate extremely low. Code reviews not only provide opportunities for personal growth and learning, but also serve as crucial information pathways for the engineering group.
Loop three is our investments in long-term growth. Our engineering team is invested in staying up to date on industry best practices. We have a weekly hour of learning when two team members discuss a technical topic in a long-form conversational interview. It’s not uncommon for everyone, presenters included, to walk away having learned something.
How do you serve as a mentor to members of your team?
Every situation is different. Ideas can be delicate. Sometimes my role is to not be critical, but rather encourage my colleague to keep exploring solutions. At other times, my role requires me to be the “idiot in the room” and have someone walk me through a problem step by step. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and every mentoring situation requires a thoughtful approach.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and every mentoring situation requires a thoughtful approach.”
How has a mentorship culture helped your team grow?
We’re a team with a mentorship culture. I didn’t make the decision, but I benefit from it, help evolve the definition of it and will hopefully leave it in a better state than when I found it.
One of my goals is to unblock the path to principal engineer. Previously, our principal engineers were truly unicorn engineers. As our application continued to grow in complexity, so did the requirements for that candidate. Our mentoring and hiring program no longer reflected this, and the role became impossible to fill. We’re working on some big and challenging problems to scale the team into the next generation of our platform, and this starts with a focus on the three loops: people and new hires, day-to-day processes and long-term development.
Bliss Point Media leverages computer science to identify high-growth marketing opportunities for brands. To stay on the cutting edge of the adtech industry, a diverse engineering team is imperative. “Everyone joins the team with different backgrounds and strengths,” said Yu. Her approach to mentoring starts “by understanding each team member as an individual so we can build an environment that is both supportive and challenging.”
What’s a practice your team follows that encourages a culture of mentorship and knowledge-sharing?
Every Thursday we have an hour-long deep-dive session as an engineering team. It allows us to pause and regroup outside of our normal day-to-day activities with the goal of interacting as a team and learning from one another. This is a flexible time for anything from presentations to bug bashes to paired programming. It gives people an opportunity to demo a new feature they’ve launched or see a different part of the tech stack. Occasionally we’ll have a guided conversation to brainstorm process-oriented items like unit and integration testing, or our approach to hiring and interviewing.
How do you serve as a mentor to members of your team?
I focus on dispelling the fear around breaking something and empowering our engineers so we can focus on solving problems. It’s important to keep a cool head during an urgent situation. Asking “how can we fix this?” rather than “what went wrong?” is more productive and can instill confidence rather than panic. By modeling this in critical moments, it can reinforce trust across the team.
I focus on dispelling the fear around breaking something and empowering our engineers so we can focus on solving problems.”
How has a mentorship culture helped your team grow?
Mentorship has helped build a culture of ownership for every engineer on our team and encouraged them to grow. One engineer may need more guidance on priorities, whereas another may struggle to evaluate engineering tradeoffs. If we give each engineer the right tools and questions to ask, they are able to gain more autonomy and ownership.
