1:1 Mentoring Sessions

“Show me a successful individual and I'll show you someone who had real positive influences in his or her life. I don't care what you do for a living — if you do it well, I'm sure there was someone cheering you on or showing the way. A mentor."

— Denzel Washington

To become a successful Software Engineer/Developer, you need to know a lot more than just how to code, and having a great mentor is game-changing

One of the things that really helped me earlier in my career, was having amazing mentors.

I think about this a lot and I’m quite certain that if it wasn’t for them, my whole career would certainly be different — heck, my whole life would certainly be different.

Back in 2008, when I was starting to learn how to code, I had great teachers who were really patient to walk me through the basic concepts about software development, in a way that these concepts really “clicked” and made sense to me.

I always feel like the best teachers/mentors are the ones that really help you understand why something works or why something is better, instead of just telling you to do things in a certain way.

Eventually, I finished my studies and started to work with companies, but quite soon I realized that even though I knew how to code, I actually knew nothing about being a software developer, how to get better at it, and how to actually build real products in a scalable and efficient way.

Sometimes it’s hard to cross paths with great mentors

I was lucky enough to work with some amazing coworkers and managers, who again, were really kind and patient with me, and taught me things in a way that allowed me to understand why certain techniques or approaches were better — unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Sometimes you’re the only developer within the organization you’re working for, or sometimes you have other developers, more experienced than you, but not patient/kind enough to teach you things in a way that works for you.

Why I’ve decided to start mentoring people

I’ve recently discovered that mentoring people is something that I actually love doing. It brings me lots of joy, happiness, and more importantly, a sense of purpose.

From the feedback that I got so far, it seems that I’m quite good at it — might be because I try to follow the same approach of all the amazing people that I was lucky to crossed paths with and learn so much from.

Essentially, I’ve decided to start hosting 1:1 mentoring sessions to hopefully be that experienced developer who can patiently explain why certain techniques and approaches are better, in a way that people can truly understand.

I believe these sessions can be helpful for things like:

• Getting started with frontend development or backend development
• Learning more about a specific subject/topic that might be more confusing
• Preparing for a job interview or getting career tips and advice
• Debugging a weird issue within some codebase that’s hard to figure out
• Brainstorming for your own product or personal project — either from a technical perspective or from a business perspective
• Increasing the productivity with tips, ideas, and suggestions
• Whatever it might be! As long as I feel capable of providing valuable help for it, I’ll be more than happy to do it

If you’re still not certain that these sessions can be helpful for you, feel free to reach out to hello@mariobalca.com, and let’s talk it through — there’s no better way to figure that out!