A crisis of experience is coming. More people than ever are getting into software development, but the need for software engineers is growing even faster. This is going to create an imbalance where senior software engineers are going to be in short supply. If you’ve been in this game for a while, congratulations. Your tenure alone is going to ensure a long and lucrative career. If you’re just getting started. I have good news and bad news.
The good news is that it’s going to be easier for you to get your first dev job. The bad news is that you might be a software expert at your new job a lot sooner than you feel ready for. I’ve been in that position before. It can be very overwhelming. Having someone experienced available to turn to has an incredibly stabling effect and can give new engineers the confidence to face tough challenges. Lacking that reliable resource often leads to stress, frustration, and burnout.
I don’t want that for you. I don’t want that for our craft. Like you, I love web development. Particularly the frontend; HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I believe we all benefit when more of us are well informed and honed in our craft. We have a great culture of knowledge sharing with so much content on the web. The proliferation of boot camps, and paid courses, demonstrate, though, that self-education is not sufficient. And once those courses are over, what resources do we have if some things haven’t quite clicked? Searching the web for answers to questions we don’t even know we have only adds to our frustrations. Those of us who have had mentors, and other experienced people available to us are at a distinct advantage over others in our field. As a greater and greater influx of new developers enter the market, the ratio of experienced engineers to newer engineers only gets larger and access to that needed guidance shrinks.
These are some of the thoughts that have been cooking in the back of my mind for several years now and I think the time has come for me to begin to do something about it. To that end, I’m going to be offering free structured mentoring to a small handful of people for a period of time. My intent is to try to find a pattern that works for the most people and then begin offering paid mentorships. At the end of this trial, I hope to develop a price point that is affordable to any who wants it and that still allows me to keep the lights on. Who knows where this will go, but I can imagine bringing on more trusted engineers as mentors to give access to quality mentoring to as many people as possible in whatever stage of their career they happen to be in. From pre-employment to seasoned veterans looking for guidance down an aspect of programming.
I’d love to hear your feedback. Does this sound intriguing? Is it something you or someone you know could be interested in? Might this be a waste of my time and others? I think there is a need. I hope I can be an asset to a few.
