14 min read · 2,702 words
The Mentorship Desert
I’ve been harping on the damage the ever-increasing desire for efficiency has had on the ability to be empathetic in the workplace… and I’m not stopping now!
Another aftereffect of the efficiency trap, is that we’ve created a mentorship desert in our engineering organizations. This is a byproduct of the drive toward commoditization in the software engineering field, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve eschewed the messy, time-intensive, and emotionally taxing work of mentorship and people development.
While we want people to keep learning and growing, and exploring new technologies like AI, we’ve done so without building in the tools and more importantly TIME to make that learning and growth possible.
It’s not enough to put in your 40-hour work week and make a 35% or more margin on your cost to the company, but on top of that you need to spend your personal time working on growth, whether it’s in the form of reading books to build your skill sets or experimentation with net new technologies. And that expectation, on top of return to office mandates (another topic we’ll cover in a different post) we just keep bleeding more and more time out of our employees without any expectation of paying them for that time.
But it wasn’t always like this, and it doesn’t have to keep going like this. We can pull back if we just stop the endless quest for efficiency.
As an admitted self-righteous asshole who always thinks that he’s right, it’s tough to receive feedback. Honestly, I’m shocked that I had leaders who were willing to do it because I’m not exactly one to “receive negative feedback well” lol. But I want to walk through two examples to talk about the expectations we used to have for leaders (and I’m sure there are places where this is still the expecation — and if you’re reading this thinking “we still do this Scott!” 1) count yourself lucky 2) do your best to keep that going and don’t let them take it away from you).
Let’s go chronologically.
Back in the day, I was a technology trainer for Smith Barney. What were my qualifications? I had some financial advisor licenses and I went to USC so I could bond with one of the people that needed to say yes lol. I’m sure there’s other things that factored in, but looking back, that’s the realistic answer from my end.
All that to say, I needed to get training and help so I could be a good trainer.
And even though it was expensive, Smith Barney invested a lot in making sure that I had all the tools to be successful. I would travel to shadow trainers in other regions, I would spend time talking to other trainers to get more insight on their work, and I was given time to set aside to learn the systems myself.
Some of that is still standard, but the part that really stood out was that my supervisor made it a point to observe all of us in action at least 3-4 times a year.
I’ll never forget the first time she shadowed me, when she had me fly to Southern California and give a presentation to new financial advisors just getting into the game. I put together a tight presentation with a lot of great detail of things that they should be taking advantage of and how to set themselves up for success with their technology and felt like I had it DOWN.
I got up on the stage, gave my presentation, saw a lot of nodding heads, and figured I nailed it (remember, cocky little shit who assumes he is always right).
I finish up, get off the stage and go to the back to hang with my boss while the next trainings went on about actual investment tools and things that we weren’t responsible for, and she pulled me outside to do a debrief.
This is a paraphrasing of the conversation but it’s how it’s cauterized in my memory lol.
“How’d you think that went Scott?”
“Pretty well! I think I knew my stuff and got a great amount of information out that is going to be really helpful for them!”
“That’s very true, you knew your stuff, you had all the info that you needed, and you delivered it all to them in a way that they could understand. But… did you notice that after about 5 minutes their eyes started glazing over and they started doodling or trying to do whatever they could to keep themselves paying attention? That’s not because you don’t know your stuff, you do - but you didn’t make it fun for them. You are a goofy guy, you are fun and funny, and up there you were a stiff. You need to put some humor in there, show off your personality, make them want to listen to YOU rather than to your content.”
And there’s a conversation to have there about how I received that information (after a brief stint of “fuck you I was great” in my head I took it better than I would have expected lol).
But this conversation isn’t about me, it’s about the work that my boss (in case you’re wondering her name is Nina Hollon, she’s probably the best boss that I’ve ever had — SORRY ALL THE OTHER BOSSES IT’S NOT THAT YOU’RE NOT AMAZING YOU JUST HAVEN’T MET NINA, and if she asked me to work for her again I would jump at the chance, and if you need any help with organizational change or training, hit her up here) put in.
She had to set aside 2 days to shadow me, which didn’t just include driving around Southern California with me, but also making sure that she wasn’t being pulled into other things that would make her unable to truly observe what I was doing.
She also had to create a space for me to act as I would without her being there, so that I wasn’t “performing” for her, but rather was just doing my job in a way where she could observe me.
She had to have created enough of a relationship that she could move beyond the boiler plate type of responses we’re accustomed to from our superviors, and make it truly personal.
Then she had to create a specific, “here’s what you did well, here’s what needs improvement, and here’s how to get to that improvement” response to the observations she was making, and do it in the moment without it being derogatory.
And finally, she needed to then follow up, scheduling more shadow opportunities to see if I was actually taking her up on her advice and becoming better!
That story is less a “Scott was screwing up and needed to be taught a lesson” and instead just needed some specific coaching to move from where I was to where Nina knew I could be (that’s a thing I missed! She also had to know me well enough to know what I was capable of vs what I was doing!).
This next one… definitely more about me screwing up and needing to get my head on straight.
When I was first working for mFoundry, I’d never been in what you’d call a “client facing” role. I’d had clients sure, but it was very much order taking and just following schedules and nothing that required any thought or effort. And then suddenly, I was in the thick of being in professional services. And yeeeesh I didn’t know what I was doing.
I was making all sorts of decisions that if I look back, I can see just how dumb they were but in the moment I “thought I was right” (again, arrogant asshole lol).
But I definitely wasn’t, and my poor boss knew he had to deal with it. I was blowing off our main client because I thought he was being unreasonable, I wasn’t consistently on time to our standups because I felt like they weren’t providing value, and I was being entirely too emotional about every little thing that happened outside of my expectations. All horrible things to be doing in any job, but even worse when it’s all client facing!
And so one day, my boss pulls me aside and essentially says, “hey man, this conversation sucks, but you’re really screwing up right now.” Then he enumerated all the above along with a “if this isn’t a good fit, we need to make sure we deal with it, and I think you ARE a good fit, but you’re not acting like it.”
Man. What a hard conversation to have. And I’m again not talking about me, and my childish initial in my head reaction which again landed somewhere on the, “fuck you I can do anything and I’m doing great” spectrum. But no, I’m talking about HIM having that conversation with me. That’s a shitty thing to have to do. And I know that he wanted me to work, because he hired me! And because I was dropping the ball and acting immaturely, he had to have a really shitty conversation.
Again, think about everything that went into having that incredibly hard conversation with me.
He had to be observant enough to see where I was struggling, and to gather feedback from the client and the team to see what they were thinking and feeling about my behavior.
He had to be flexible enough that in the moment he could pull me aside to have that conversation.
He had to create an environment where he could provide that feedback with a hope that it would lead to a better outcome.
He had to think about where to have the conversation because our office was small and didn’t have easily usable conference rooms for a conversation like this, so he took me outside so we wouldn’t be observed or have me feel uncomfortable getting this feedback near people.
He had to create clear expectations for behavioral changes that would lead to the right outcomes.
And again, he had to follow up to ensure that I was living up to the agreements we came to.
And on top of all that, he also gave me personal anecdotes to show that this wasn’t a “me” problem, but rather a “me at work” problem, and gave me specific ideas to help with emotional regulation like taking walks during the work day, or making sure I wasn’t fully online all the time, and most importantly that I could absolutely change and get to the point where we didn’t have to have these kinds of conversations ever again.
The thing about both of these examples is, they weren’t done as a part of formal review process, but they were done as a part of the job expectations of my managers. And they were able to build in the time into their schedules to provide that level of oversight, feedback, and mentorship. It wasn’t just a thing that they were doing, it was an expectation of the job and it was expected that they expend significant time doing that level of mentorship.
And I admit, those examples aren’t me being an engineer and being mentored, and I realize that there’s a level of difference there where my skills that needed to be worked on were more soft skills, and typically engineers start off needing more help with hard skills then they transition to needing soft skills as they grow in their careers. But let’s set that aside and talk about what is actually happening in the industry.
Our industry (and our society really) is entirely too focused on efficiency over value creation. And I think we mistake efficiency as a signal that things are working well. And as a result, we look at our burn down charts, and analyze our throughput and velocity, we look at down time and can see if things are “good” or “bad”. But in none of that are we measuring value add. We’re just measuring what we think translates to “efficiency” which isn’t adding value, it’s just saying whether we’re moving fast enough.
But what does it matter if you’re moving fast without measuring the direction you’re going in!
Yikes I kinda took this down a road I wasn’t intending to go down lol. The point being, efficiency for efficiency’s sake isn’t value creation. And we’re missing the point that value isn’t created by technology. Technology is the vehicle that we use to create value. And we have to define that value OUTSIDE of technology. And mentorship, leadership, and truly caring about the people that you work with is how you create that value. Because in the end, people will drive innovation. People will come up with new and interesting ideas. People will figure out ways to solve problems we didn’t even know we could solve.
But efficiency won’t.
And in the end, what we end up doing, is instead of putting the onus on companies to pay for the value that their employees are creating, we’re putting the value on “time” that they spend creating… something. And time is a horrible measurement of value in a business context. Because a company isn’t better off or worse off with me sitting behind my desk from 9-5 than they are if I can do the same amount of work from 10-2. Those are equal outcomes for the business. But the problem isn’t about creating value, it’s about creating structure. Because we’re focused on the wrong things.
Even if we ignore all of my humanistic hippie dippie flower power nonsense and look at cold hard dollars, it doesn’t make sense for a company to pay someone doing the work from 10-2 differently than someone doing the work from 9-5. If one of them is more valuable to a company, it would be the person that can do the work from 10-2. Because they have POTENTIAL to do more.
But even then we’re ignoring the basic truths of humanity - we’re all different and we’re all weird.
That rock star who gets things done from 10-2 when it takes most people from 9-5 might actually get LESS done if you make them spend 9-5 in the office.
The person barely squeaking by getting things done from 9-5 might still be a better employee than the person working from 10-2 becuase their day is spent helping OTHER people get things done, which is why they’re barely getting their own work done.
And this is what we lose when we stop thinking about people and start thinking about abstractions like efficiency. We lose our humanity.
And this all comes back to the empathy tax. We’re expecting leaders and workers to take on the emotional load of figuring each other out and finding out how to best utilize their skills without giving them the runway to do it! We expect them to learn and grow their skills on their own time. As an investment in themselves. Hustle culture run amok.
And when we demonstrate to our new employees that the expectation is that they do all this learning on their own, they’re not educated enough in how the workplace should work to question it. So they do it, and burn themselves out.
It becomes a death spiral of empathy taxation that leads to cannibalizing yourself in the name of the “good of the company” as the company could give a shit about what’s good for you.
As a leader you end up with no time to mentor, which means your juniors don’t develop, which means you have to take on more to get the same level of output as you did before when your juniors could take on more work, and then you get even LESS time to mentor, and so on and so on ad infinitum.
We’ve been brainwashed to think that mentorship is a luxury we can’t afford. In reality, it’s the foundation we’re letting wither away. Either we choose to invest in the growth of our people, or we’ll be forced to watch them leave for places that will.