Guiding data minds: how mentoring transforms careers for both sides

Speaker 1 [00:07]

Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you all for coming here tonight. I know it has been a very long day for all of us, right, with many exciting talks. I hope you won't regret that you are sitting now in this room and will spend the next half an hour with me. Do let me know if you do regret your time afterwards. I'm actually the first time speaker at PyCon and PyData, and it's the first time I'm talking about mentoring from the stage. So, like, two reasons to be nervous. But I will try to calm down and just walk you through the stuff I prepared for you tonight, right? I'm going to talk about mentoring. And even if you never heard about mentoring, you must probably have heard about mentors, you know, this magic people who are very wise and smart. And they can help you and guide you and walk you through your career. And, of course, quite often the first question which comes to your mind, yeah, So like senior experienced person wait a minute. I have one right. I have a manager in my team So most of the people here, I believe I employed So you have a team lead on the manager, right and you can ask, okay Why do you need a mentor when I have a manager, right? The reason why we need some other people who can also guide us through in addition to our managers Is that I believe they are living in not so ideal world where most of the managers are not so good I'm not saying bad managers, because bad managers means they are nasty people, they create toxic environment, right? They don't care about the team at all, and so on, no. I believe most of the people are quite reasonable, they have good intentions, but for some reason they still are not so good managers, right? There might be multiple reasons for this. There might be lack of experience, lack of technical knowledge, because being a manager does not mean you are the most senior developer in the team, and so on. They might be too busy, especially for the people who are first-time managers, they might be simple too busy fighting their own imposter syndrome. And last but not least, managers quite often have very different goals and objectives compared to the individual contributors which substitute the team, right? Therefore, we do need some people, some external people, which can help us if we want to move our career forward and can give us a bit of guidance, especially at the time when our managers are not there. This is one reason. Another reason, we are living in the universe of lifelong learning. I'm pretty sure you have heard about this term, and you might get tired about this by now. But the point is that we are working in the technology domain, right? So it's all about innovation. It goes very fast, especially during the last couple of years with all of this AI hype. But even before, so for people who have been there before ChatGPT appeared, You also know that it was not much, let's say, slower in the past, right? And this requires from us, from the professionals working in this team, continuous growth in essentially both dimensions. So in the breadth, like how many tools and how many frameworks you know and master, and also in the depth, like how good you know the principles, right? How good you are in the system design and things like that. And quite often you start to ask yourself, Okay, how fast I actually need to run to just stay relevant in the field, right? And he also might be the good reason for you to approach someone and ask for advice in this situation Why I'm giving this talk here. I actually have a full-time job I'm a solution architect in the very well-known company And I do mentoring in my free time and I notice that we have very too little mentor center, right? Right, there is a huge demand, there are many people looking for advice and directions, and there are simply not enough mentors. So my goal here tonight is to convince you that becoming a mentor is not so scary as it might look like from outside and have plenty of benefits for yourself as well. Okay, let's go into this. Before I jump into this and talk about pros and cons of mentorship and mentoring in general, I think it's nice to introduce this term to make sure we are staying on the same page, right? So mentoring is a professional relationship where a more experienced person, which is called mentor, supports the growth and development of a less experienced person, the mentee. Here you can see the picture generated by GNI, obviously, right? The first stereotype that mentee is a young person and mentor is a more older person, it doesn't have to be this way, right? So it's all about experience. It might be that you as a mentor will mentor a person who is older than you, but they're a newcomer in the field where you already collect a lot of experience, right? The most important here that you have this experience and you kind of, okay, I've walked this path before and now I can show you the way. How to do it faster, better, smarter, and so on. Obviously, in the time we are living in, essentially in the fast-growing field, It's rather rare that you know exactly this path, right? So it might be that you never work exactly this path because everything is new for you as well, but still with your experience, you can support many people to make wiser choices. I work as a mentor for quite some time, and I always collect the data from my mentor, so I'm a data scientist. So I collect a lot of data from the people with whom I work, and so I run the survey and the charts you are going to see here today are coming from the survey. So the question I ask my own mentors. So first question I ask them, why did you look for a mentor at all, right? So I mentor in machine learning and AI, so the most popular answer, maybe looking for someone who is experienced in machine learning and AI, right? Another popular reason, getting stuck in your current role and not sure if you should change the job or the company or what should you do in this situation. And last but not least is also being newbie in the field, right? So like you're just entering the field of data, you are very confused, and you're trying to understand where you should go. So I would say the unknown territory in general, like going to another country, going to a new field, going to a new company, this is a very popular reason why people started to look for help. And with people getting many advantages, which I believe are quite obvious, right? So first of all, they get the clarity on the direction for their professional growth, right? They also get accelerated technical skill development and expansion of their network because their mentor is a very experienced person who for sure knows many people and exposure to the best practices, right? And the last reason, which I believe is the most important, why people actually start look for a mentor is having someone on their side who will watch how they progress, right? Because quite often you start something, you have a nice idea, you have a goal in front of you, you know how to reach this goal. But at some point other priorities jump into your life and you stop because no one is watching you, right? So mentor can help you to prevent the situation and actually remind you about your goal, right? And help you to keep going despite some other challenges you might see in your life. What mentors are getting in return, they're getting this extremely valuable feeling, and it's like a drug, I can tell you, but your knowledge is highly appreciated, right? So back to my survey where I asked what people actually like about working with mentor, most Most of the people enjoyed connecting with an experienced person to talk about things which are interesting to them. Another popular reason also discussed work-related challenges or job search-related challenges in case if they were looking for a new job. All kind of directions like suggestions of the material they can study or guidance on the project was another popular reason. And someone was really nice to me and mentioned that they just enjoy talking with a smart person, which I think is great. Yeah, so it's really cool. How does it look like, you can ask yourself. So there are two approaches to the mentorship. One I called we listen and don't judge, but help to find a better way, right? And it looks very simple. So your mentee comes to you and tell about the challenge they're facing at work, for example, right? You, as a mentor, share your opinion and give them advice and maybe suggest them a couple of things they can do to improve the situation. And when you meet regularly to follow up and address this challenge, right? So it's kind of ad hoc help, whereas a certain thing you try to address, right, and there are certain things you can apply here. Another way I call it a structured mentorship, this is where you define a goal before, so are not tackling any particular challenge or situation, you define a goal in general, right? So, the goal might be as simple as I would like to learn everything about NLP and maybe a bit more ambitious, like I would like to become senior machine learning engineer in my team or I would like to aim for the management position somewhere else and so on and so forth, right? So, there are really no restrictions how wide or how big your goal can be. The idea here and why people actually reach out to mentor because they are not sure how to, what you should do actually to reach the goal. So you have this idea, you would like to have it, but you have no clue why. So you ask more experienced people what they have in mind for this, and mentor comes up with a plan. The plan is then followed, and then you meet regularly and, yeah, check if plan needs to be corrected, if everything goes or if everything stays on the track, and so on. So it's kind of a little personal project you run for yourself, for yourself, and here, again, you get guidance and support from someone who can also tell you and kind of help you understand if there is anything which needs to be changed. The both approaches are extremely valuable, I would say, and it all depends on the people and on the situation where you are to say which approach should be taken. So I would not say that one is better than another. One thing one should keep in mind that regardless which approach you take, you can't really predict one thing, namely how long your relationship will last. And this is what mentors should take into account, that quite often people in the beginning very motivated, very engaged, but then suddenly it drops down and they might disappear. So again, I collected the data from people I was working with, and here you can see on x-axis there is a mentorship length in months, and on y-axis the percentage of the mentors who stopped after some certain amount of months. And as you can see, it's speaking around two months, right? And essentially the half of my data points living below three months. And there is very, very long tail. So many people stay with you more than a year, which is amazing. But here what you should always keep in mind when you start working with someone that it's quite probable that you won't see each other after three months. The most typical reason, many people overestimate how much time they actually have for this thing, right? So it's not just talking with a mentor and finding the time to meet. It's also about the steps mentors suggest you to do, which you need to implement in your own time, right? Another reason, we're all fragile, right? So we're all humans. We can get ill. We might get in an accident, and this might throw us from the seat for some time. Another reason, among my mentors, it's a bit of a child. It's not like they can't predict when it will happen, but it's definitely the point where you should pause whatever the professional development you had in mind and take care about someone else. By the way, this is also the people who most probably will come back after some time will pass. So I do enjoy working with young moms for this reason. And my favorite reason is the goal was reached, right? So, again, it might happen within three months. It depends like how far the mentor was on himself before we met, right? It might happen shortly after. It might take much longer. It depends on your goal, right? But of course, I always celebrate when goal was reached because this is the whole point of this. Yeah, and I believe I always keep in mind this, that when people come to me and I ask them, OK, how long do you think we'll work together? We always kind of very generous with a time estimate. And I always keep in mind that maybe it won't last that long. But still, when we come to the planning, especially in this structured mentorship approach, I always plan it without thinking about any constraints, just like for the sake of the goal, how long it will take to reach this goal. And then we will see. Another reason with this list, as you can see, which I skipped, is mentor-mentee mismatch, right? I'm quite popular mentor, I can tell you. So I'm a mentor on one quite famous platform where more than 1,000 other mentors are present. and I'm top 2% of them, which means like extremely appreciated by people who are looking for mentors on this platform. And even in this situation, around 30% of people don't find me very useful, right? And I have to accept this. So here you can see that, yeah, I run my survey usually in the end of the year, so it's not necessarily end of a mentorship, but here you can get kind of a pictures so i asked people in the end of the last year uh if they reach their goal um many like 30 said yes um more than 40 percent said no but i feel i get closer which is already very positive right and when there is like 30 percent who said no and i believe i still far from this um right and and here of course i always try to address this and see what i can do better right it's a very valuable feedback but sometimes there is just nothing i can do right it's just we don't fit We have very different values, and the goals and the objective of the people don't align with my own, so therefore I can't really give any useful advice. Another thing I should be, I want to be transparent, right? I want you to become mentors, but there are also some things you should keep in mind that it's not so easy as it seems. It's not like you see it and you just share your wisdom, right? There is a lot of preparation ongoing between your meeting with your mentors and in your life in general as soon as you want to become a mentor. So first of all, to help someone in their journey, you need to reflect a lot on your own journey. And it's not everyone's cup of tea, right? So sit and think and again and again and then think, okay, this worked for me five years ago, but maybe right now the time is different and my kind of my own experience is not relevant, right? So you have to accept and always kind of judge how much you can advise in this situation, right? The field is rapidly changing. This is a challenge for your mentors, but also a challenge for you, because you also have to stay up to date and become relevant, and people will always ask you where the whole field is going, so you always have to have an answer for this, right? And it's also about working with people, so it's never you're just a mentor in tech and you just give advices about best algorithm or best LLM model. which should be applied in this particular project, right? So quite often, mentee will come to you with some other problems, right? So intercommunication problems and stuff like this. So your communication skills, your emotional intelligence, your readiness to listen will have a huge impact. And this is the most valuable thing for many people I've worked with that they appreciate this feedback, you know, and this communication they simply have. Yeah, this sounds kind of a lot, right? Is it actually worth it? The answer is obviously yes, otherwise I wouldn't be standing here. What are the advantages for the mentor? I hope you notice that at least as long as advantages for the mentee, and this is done by purpose. So this thing you learn a lot and you need to stay up to date has another side to this. You will have to explain stuff, sometimes again and again, sometimes to the different people, sometimes from a different perspective, but this overall, like, explaining someone is extremely valuable for your own knowledge and deepening your expertise. Right? The fun fact, so last summer I was looking for a job myself, and I noticed it was first time in my life I didn't have to prepare much for the technical interviews because I had so much experience talking about technical stuff that I could go without any preparation and just nail the interview. It doesn't have to be that extreme, but it tells you how much practice you will have. Another point here is enhanced leadership skills, so it's about leading someone. Of course, it's very different compared to being a manager, but still I believe it helps you a lot also to see the perspective from the other side, and I know many people for for whom mentoring was a way to break into the senior and leadership roles. So I highly recommend this if you're considering this, right? You also work with very bright minds, and it gives you a very interesting perspective of many things, right? So you never looked at the stuff at this angle before. It's expanding your own professional network, and, of course, you create impact, right? So if you mentor, like, more than one person, you already have impact in the field. And last but not least, it's this personal fulfillment, right? So the sharing things you already know and seeing that knowledge you collected and the experience you collected is extremely valuable. I will give one, a few seconds for the windows to close. Let's just appreciate this technique. Okay. Right. Another thing I would like to cover tonight is a paid mentorship as a concept. So the mentorship can be done voluntarily, like unpaid and paid, right? I have been on both sides and also both as mentee and mentor, therefore I have a lot to say. I myself right now is a paid mentor. It doesn't mean I don't work with people for free, but with most of the people I work with, they're paying for it, right? So, as you can imagine, I am a huge fan of a paid mentorship, and I believe it has also a significant value for both sides again, right? So the main thing is paying because we want focused and personal guideline. And also, it's a great way to secure mentor time, because people who decided to become a paid mentor, they must probably think it through, they thought, okay, when I will find the time for this, how much time I can allocate, and if I can commit working with someone or If you ever try to work with a voluntary mentor who is quite advanced in their career, you might notice that maybe the first two meetings work okay, but when these people suddenly got extremely busy, it's almost impossible to get time in their calendar to simply talk with them. So here it's a kind of your way to secure their time. And another thing, I always remind people who are looking for the mentor that these people are high qualified professionals, their time is extremely valuable, and the knowledge they collected and shared with you within one hour session, they collected for many years, right? They might did this in their free time, they might did it through a lot of pain, therefore I think they deserve to be paid for this experience they shared with you, which you won't have yourself. And I think it's like you, let's say, return on investment is huge here, right? While mentors charge for the same reason, their time is very valuable, it also leads to a better engagement, right? So if people work for paying with you, they usually try to follow the things you suggest and not just put it aside because you're some random person, they meet you once per month and they don't really care if something else jumps in, right? So here we're kind of more cautious about their own time and their own investment. And it's also kind of sustainable way for yourself as a mentor, because when someone is paying for you, it's become a job and you can treat this as a job. You treat your mentors as a client and you have some responsibilities in front of them. But also you need to accept that this is a job and maybe you should not be, you know, always available for calls on Sunday morning if it's the time you would like to enjoy with your family. The warning here, however, if you want to become rich, mentoring is the wrong way. You won't. Believe me. It's really like the amount you will get paid for this is still much lower than your own investment, right? And the time and effort investment will be much higher compared to the unpaid mentorship. And it's not like you can make a ton of money out of it. Before I conclude, I think it might be interesting for you to know how did I become a mentor. It's not like I woke up one day and thought, hmm, today is the day to become a mentor. Let's do this. Right? It's not at all. So it started rather slowly, and I think the first milestone towards this direction was when I decided to move myself, so I wanted to enter the unknown territory for myself. So I was a researcher in particle physics for a long time, and then I decided to move to the industry and become a data scientist if you would like to learn more tomorrow will be a career journey session at 1015 in dynamicum so come there will be a 12 more people telling about way career journey and how they we all end up working in this fascinating field but for now what all what you need to know with you at some point I moved to the industry after I did with some people from academia notice list and also started to ask me for advice right So I help a friend when I help a friend of a friend and did this around four times, and every time was quite successful, right? With some people, we were just talking. With some people, I was suggesting something. So now I know that what I was doing was essentially mentoring them. But back when I didn't have this term, right? It was just, yeah, this guy who seems to be very nice, and I think he deserves to have a better life. That's it. In parallel, I had some kind of imposter syndrome, if you like, because I was working in the field I did not have a proper education in, right? And I was trying to cover this gap by taking many courses and I read almost every book I could find about data in the mail just to make sure that I have enough knowledge. And at some point, I noticed that actually the amount of this knowledge I can apply in my actual job is very low, right? So if you work in this field, you know that, yeah, you hear a lot of things and then you go back after this fascinating week and you use very little of what you learn here, right? So I was experienced with. So I started to look for a mentor for myself. I'm talking with various people and notice that some of them were not very good mentors, I must say. And I thought, OK, if I know that this guy is not very good, it means like I can do this better. Let's give it a try. And this is how I become a mentor in 2022. Never stopped since then. And I extremely enjoy it and very appreciate it. Right. But there are some days when it's hard, and there are some days when I commit to something I don't know, and I'm usually very transparent with my mentors. I don't know it. We will do this and learn this together. And then I think, okay, it's Sunday 4 in the morning, I'm doing some strange course. Just because I have Monday meeting with this mentor and I would like to be prepared, it's weird. But other than that, I do enjoy it, and I think it's worth every single minute of my life. As I said, it's extremely interesting, and I hope I managed to convince you, despite being very transparent, there are some challenges on the way. There are many rewards, and I strongly encourage you to become a mentor or at least give it a try to help someone, and we do need more mentors in tech. Follow me on LinkedIn if you would like to learn more about my mentoring practice and everything around this, and if after this talk you decided to become a mentor, I'm not not sure where to start, do reach out to me. Thank you.

Speaker 2 [25:27]

More hands of applause please Anna that was amazing. Can we please give her again the hands of applause? Okay, we have multiple questions in Slido So we will try to go through some if time allows then we can go through as many as we can the first question is From anonymous and he's asking if you are a mentor yourself I mean, do you have a mentor yourself?

Speaker 1 [25:59]

I do. I do. Yes, of course. I mean, I would not. I think the biggest mistake in my life, which I did myself when I was transitioning to the industry, I did not look for help. I was like bold enough. And I thought, I will figure this out. I have a Google at my disposal. And it took me quite some long time. And since then, I never repeat this mistake again. So every time I need some help, I try to find for the right person, pay for the time and work with them as long as it's needed. And it's also very valuable for me.

Speaker 2 [25:59]

I do.

Speaker 1 [26:28]

So this is why I also promote not only becoming a mentor, but also looking for a mentor yourself. I think it's a tremendous boost to your career and to your professional journey.

Speaker 2 [26:39]

The second question is, are you able to estimate how much time the mentee will need to reach their goal? And do you share this estimate with them?

Speaker 1 [26:49]

Yes, absolutely. I mean, this is the most popular question, right? So first question, what do I need to do?

Speaker 2 [26:49]

Yes.

Speaker 1 [26:54]

So here's the idea I have, what do I need to do to make it happen? And second, how long it will take? I mean, the answer, it depends, right? I can do my best, like how much time you have. This is what I think I have in mind. If you do this regularly, this is how long it might take. I would say my estimates 80% right but in many cases where they're off right and it's not because people are lazy or something but because all of his reasons I mentioned before right so illnesses underestimating or overestimating how much time you have and so

Speaker 2 [27:34]

Okay, the third question is, is it possible and is it useful to measure the impact of being a mentor and increase it over time? For instance, when mentoring is an expectation for senior roles.

Speaker 1 [27:50]

I'm not sure I understand the question, so the question if it's possible to estimate the impact and what was the second part?

Speaker 2 [27:58]

The second point is, for instance, when mentoring is an expectation for senior adults. Anybody ask this question in the audience? Maybe you can expand on that.

Speaker 1 [28:07]

okay you can say I will I will repeat this for people who are watching us online tonight

Speaker 2 [28:15]

Basically, the question is indeed whether it's possible

Speaker 1 [28:19]

whether it's possible to measure impact or whether...

Speaker 2 [28:20]

impact or whether it kind of

Speaker 1 [28:21]

that kind of deducts from this mentoring mentee.

Speaker 2 [28:24]

mentee relationships.

Speaker 1 [28:25]

relationship. To me, this is something.

Speaker 2 [28:27]

selfless in a sense of

Speaker 1 [28:28]

in a sense, so if

Speaker 2 [28:29]

So if we are talking about senior roles where it might be an expectation to...

Speaker 1 [28:34]

to be a man.

Speaker 2 [28:34]

be a mentor kind of out of the...

Speaker 1 [28:36]

kind of out of the blue and you're

Speaker 2 [28:37]

the blue and you're not really prepared.

Speaker 1 [28:37]

not really prepared for that right yeah that's okay so imagine if I got this right you're asking if I want to become senior rights and I decided to be a mentor just to gain the experience which might help me right I think it depends with which people you are working right because you need to be fortunate enough to find the right mentors so the mentors similar to the people you're supposed to lead later on as a senior right so therefore i think yeah if you have this and by the way you don't need to look for the people outside right so you can also ask around within your company or your team you can estimate right but it also will depend not just on you and i think this is important lesson you learn about leadership that many things are out of your hands and you need to live with this and by the way i i started my talk about talking about this not so good managers i believe being a mentor is a great way to become better manager because you do get a lot of perspective you never thought about

Speaker 2 [29:42]

Good another question is how do you best set and communicate boundaries with your mentee? For instance time commitment a synchronous response time all assuming you are doing it for free

Speaker 1 [29:57]

Yeah, this is why I stopped doing this for free, because you can't. I mean, you can define the rules, right? So it's in any relationship, right? So you can say, yeah, you can write me email anytime. It's convenient for you. But I will reply within my working hours or within hours I allocate for this, right? So you can also define the response time. However, things are happening, especially if you work with ambitious people who want to, let's say, people who are looking for a job. they often realize Friday evening that on Monday they have important interview and they need your advice and you of course can ignore them but there might be things you can't really ignore and you need to be prepared for this

Speaker 2 [30:39]

Okay, the last question is from Marcus I don't think I have to leave Marcus out because he's

Speaker 1 [31:05]

Yes, yes, I think it was the question from Marcus. Since we are a little bit running out of time, we can end here with the questions. And I'll have some more time. Thank you all.