Mentoring Developers: Gergely Orosz (Engineering Manager at Uber)

Mentoring is underutilized in the software development industry today. So, we did an interview with Gergely Orosz, currently an engineering manager at Uber, who has gained a lot of experience with mentoring over his years as a developer/manager.

In this episode, we're covering:

-Mentoring in tech today

-His approach to mentoring

-Challenges in mentoring

-How to build a mentoring program

Excerpt from the interview:

How do you think a company could implement a mentoring program?

"I've not seen many companies with good mentorship programs and this includes Uber. It's a work in progress, but at least there's something. On the other hand, despite the fact that there's not much structure or best practices, I hear people talk about mentorship all the time, so somehow it’s working. It means that people really want mentoring and it has real value, but I think companies have a long way to go.

At companies, there are two ways a process can go: from the bottom up, or from the top down. Mentoring has to be voluntary, so neither of them will fully work. It cannot just be fully organic, because you might have some teams where people mentor each other, but it will not spread to other parts of the company. You surely can’t make it mandatory.

The number one thing that helps a lot is tying mentoring into performance. Good mentoring happens in a lot of places, but often it’s left unrecognized. The most obvious place to recognize it is when you have your performance review or promotion conversation. That makes it tangible. If mentoring doesn’t come up there, it turns into a side project some people will do and others won’t."

Click here to read the full interview!

Episode source