In this article, Mentorloop Software Engineer Foyzul shares how his early mentoring experiences led to him creating a mentoring community for Bangladeshi programmers.
Lessons from My Mentors
Mentors have played a crucial role in shaping my personal and professional growth. I’ve always liked learning and my mentors have taught me valuable lessons that have helped me overcome challenges and achieve my goals. They’ve also inspired me to pass on what I’ve learned to others. It’s turned into a big part of my life, having built a community for Bangladeshi programmers who are keen to learn.
The journey that is my career in tech so far has been long and difficult at times, but a crucial part of it all are the lessons I’ve learned from my mentors.
No shortcuts to success, the ticket is hard work
My first and probably most influential mentor was a then-trainer for .NET in BASIS (now BITM), Mr. Tiemoon. He taught me a lot about tech, but he also taught me so many valuable career and life lessons.
He was the one who taught me the real value of hard work, keeping my passion for what I’m doing alive, and staying the course. Even 14 years after we met, I still remember our conversations about working hard and how this will be the ticket to slowly but surely attaining success. He taught me that when we don’t take control of our lives and responsibilities enough to work hard, what tends to happen is we look for things and people to blame for what is essentially the result of our laziness. He helped me not just see and aspire to be a certain kind of person but also to see what happens when we lose sight of our goals and what we need to do to achieve them.
Even after we stopped working together, I kept in touch with him and kept getting invaluable life lessons throughout my career so far. He is the mentor who sparked my passion for teaching, supporting, and inspiring others – something I cannot thank him enough for.
A good foundation of knowledge is invaluable
I started my career as a C# developer in Bangladesh around 2010. I was excited and eager to learn as many things as possible. However, that also meant I did not focus on mastering any particular thing. My enthusiasm helped me learn a lot of basic things about many aspects of my career, but that also meant that I had no real specialization or expertise in any particular one.
This is where another mentor of mine, Mr. Topu, came in. He was the CTO where I worked at the time and even though we didn’t have a formal mentor-mentee relationship, he was a valuable mentor for me. During my time in SELISE, we developed a great (and fun!) working relationship.
He advised me to dive deeper into the topics that really interest me and understand the underlying principles and concepts. So I did. I spent time learning more about C#, .NET, and AngularJS (1.x). I built a really solid foundation of knowledge in those areas that went deeper than a superficial understanding of the basics. This has benefited me in many ways throughout my career. It has allowed me to not only handle complex problems using that foundation but it also gave me an edge. I can confidently say that it’s because of this that I was able to ace my international interviews in Malaysia and get a couple of job offers when I decided to take the plunge and look for job opportunities outside of Bangladesh.
This changed my approach to learning and made me a more confident and competent developer. And now as a senior developer, I can use that knowledge and experience to teach and mentor others.
Change doesn’t have to be scary
A few years into my career, I noticed that technology was changing rapidly. I started worrying about becoming obsolete. I observed that my seniors in the industry, who had started their careers much earlier, were able to adapt to the changing trends and learn new skills. So, after much thought and consultation with mentors, I started working on shifting my career towards JavaScript.
It felt risky at the time as I wasn’t sure how changing my speciality would affect my career, but I didn’t want to stay complacent so I decided to go for it. It obviously involved a lot of work, but looking back, it has allowed me to adapt to the changes I was seeing happening in my industry and, just like previously, it also gave me an edge for the changes that were coming in my life as well.
In 2018, I took the time to share my goals and career aspirations with my then-direct team lead and one of my mentors, Mr. Humayun. It was a time in my career when I felt that I had enough experience and knowledge to move forward but was unsure of how to do it. He encouraged me to explore new opportunities outside of Bangladesh.
It was a familiar sentiment since earlier in my career, my first mentor Mr. Tiemoon also gave me similar advice, encouraging me to expand my horizons and explore opportunities outside of my home country. He counselled me that when the time in my career comes when I feel that I am outgrowing the local market and that I wasn’t being valued for what I bring to the table, I shouldn’t be afraid to look elsewhere. I still remember him telling me, “The whole world is waiting for you so don’t get demotivated and keep working hard as much as you can.”
It’s a big move, and one I did not take lightly as I have a family, but after lots of consideration, I decided to apply for and take opportunities overseas – first in Malaysia, then in Australia. Both of these opportunities have done really great things for my career and have allowed me to provide well for my family.
These experiences taught me to embrace change instead of fearing it and see it as an opportunity to grow and learn. Life is not a destination, but a journey, and this is what I learned from life in the last 10 or so years.
Your lifestyle is just as important as your work
All my mentors have taught me valuable lessons in work and life, but they also taught me that I need balance.
As much as they all encouraged me to work hard, they also made sure that I understood how important it was to put the same effort into taking care of myself and enjoying life. They encourage me to take breaks, relax, and recharge my energy. They also showed me how to prioritize my tasks and manage my time effectively, not just for my benefit, but also for my family. By following their example, I was able to avoid burnout and maintain a healthy and happy lifestyle.
Now working in Mentorloop, I’m lucky that this is also prioritised. We have a great culture that promotes healthy work-life balance and encourages everyone to prioritise their health – both physical and mental. It allows me to then take these lessons I’ve learned in the past and really put them into practice in my life. I now make sure that I never let pressure or stress take over my life, let work bleed into my weekends, and I also now make sure I take occasional breaks to travel with my family.
Having been privileged enough to have these great mentors in my life has encouraged me in many ways. One of which is to help others in the way that they have helped me. But what I’ve found in the years that I’ve started mentoring is that it’s more than just lending a hand. I’ve gotten so much out of it as well.
My Journey to Becoming A Mentor
I didn’t have any pre-planned mentorship journey. When I started my career as a .NET Trainer as a team member under my now-mentor Mr. Tiemoon, I felt that the students lacked not only technical knowledge but also other non-technical skills like planning or communication. Additionally, I found that many of them, for whatever reason, don’t have it in them to seek out learning opportunities for themselves.
So, after a few years into my career, when I felt that I had gained some knowledge that I thought could benefit others, I started sharing.
My First Mentee
I didn’t have many formal mentoring relationships before I started actively mentoring in online spaces. However, I can say I enjoyed mentoring a couple of the juniors in teams I was a part of throughout my whole career. One guy who particularly stands out is Md Najim who started his career under my supervision in 2014. As he began his working life, I mentored him on how to grow and what skills he needed to work on. It was very fulfilling watching him grow and get better and I’m so proud to now see him working in Malaysia in a very good company.
Mentoring Online
I started making videos on my YouTube channel @Foyzul in 2012. I started by posting video tutorials, tips, and insights on various topics related to programming, software engineering, and career. I enjoy making these videos as they allow me to share what I know with a wide audience and challenge me to learn new things and improve my skills. The channel currently has 19,000+ subscribers and I take this as a sign that what I’m sharing is valuable to people.
I also started writing articles on medium.com and dev.to. I chose to supplement sharing my knowledge in a written medium as it helps me organize my thoughts. I find that some people prefer this kind of medium for certain topics too.
I also have a Facebook page and group where I try to read community members’ messages and reply to them as best I can. This is where I feel I can best interact with the community I created and help people one-to-one as well as one-to-many. It’s here that I feel I’ve created a real culture where people feel comfortable helping each other and growing together.
Making It Accessible
I do most of my content in Bangla to make it very easily accessible to the Bangladeshi community. The reason for this is that I see a huge lack of supplementary educational resources in Bangla. While there is now an abundance of content on common topics, the community still needs different types of non-popular but essential topics in a language they understand best. For-profit creators generally ignore these non-popular yet essential topics because they don’t have a large market value. I try to fill this gap for free with the goal of helping people who actually need these things. Even after 10 years, this is what motivates me to keep going.
Sharing What I Know
I go by the philosophy of Learn → Earn → Share in that we all should start learning and using what we know to earn a living, but not keep that to ourselves. Because if it has helped you, it most probably will also help others.
I try to share my knowledge on topics that I know full-time, for-profit content creators won’t talk about. Naturally, these topics won’t be as popular, but I don’t mind. It is rewarding to get feedback from people who find this content valuable, especially when they haven’t found similar content anywhere else. It’s rewarding to know that I’m creating an impact and contributing to making people’s lives better.
Beyond Coding Basics
I create different types of educational content that revolve around software engineering – how-to’s, step-by-step guides etc. But as good as having technical content is, I find that people get a lot of value from the reviews I do on other developers’ public projects. I find that giving feedback in this way is really valuable to the community as they see the big picture from these reviews and learn how to make their own projects better.
Many programmers fall into the trap of being a “code-monkey” who only follows instructions and does not think creatively or innovatively. I want to break this stereotype and show my mentees that they can be so much more than that. I always try to encourage my mentees to explore new technologies, solve real-world problems, contribute to open-source projects, participate in hackathons, write blogs, create portfolios, etc. I love encouraging programmers and software engineers to showcase their talents and passions and make an impact in the world beyond coding.
Career and Life
I also find that a lot of people also want mentoring on more than those hard skills. They want guidance on their careers too. So I conduct an annual ‘Career Talk’ where I reflect on lessons I’ve learned from the previous year and discuss how we can all plan for the upcoming year in our careers. Beyond that, I also make myself available to people who would like more one-on-one mentoring about their careers through video calls they can book. In these calls, I help my mentees clarify their goals, make a plan for how to get there, and hopefully prepare them for the challenges they will face. That can be through advising them on what skills and knowledge they need to acquire, or how to best demonstrate certain skills and capabilities to potential employers. I really take pride in helping my mentees be ready for any opportunity and face challenges with confidence.
Sometimes, the help they need can be really simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re not important. You’d be surprised at how many young people actually need guidance on how to make the most out of learning experiences or even create a good CV and digital portfolio. I’m there to help them understand the importance of these things, guide them with tips, and point them in the right direction.
How Being A Mentor Is Helping Me
One might think that in a mentoring relationship, the mentor is doing it as a favour to the mentees. And that can still be true. However, it is more than that. Mentoring is a rewarding and fulfilling experience for me. I enjoy sharing my knowledge and skills with others who are eager to learn and grow, but I also learn and gain so much from being a mentor and from my mentees.
Being a mentor keeps me informed
As a mentor, I have to stay on top of the latest trends and developments in my field. I find that mentoring encourages me to constantly learn new things that I can pass on to my mentees. This helps me to keep my own skills sharp and relevant.
It also challenges me to work hard at understanding new concepts well enough to be able to explain them, no matter how complex they are, in simple and clear ways. And in an effort to avoid creating confusion or influencing sentiment towards certain things, I also find myself making the effort to consider every issue from several different angles or perspectives. This has helped me to hone my critical thinking skills and I feel I am way better at judging any situation or topic now than I was before.
Being a mentor helps me be a better communicator
Soft skills, especially in communication, are growth areas that can sometimes be ignored by those working in software engineering, programming, or similar roles. But as we all know, it’s crucial for success.
Mentoring also helps me improve these soft skills. I find that as a mentor, I have learned to communicate clearly and respectfully with my mentees, express my ideas and opinions in an assertive yet respectful and engaging way, and empathize with their feelings and perspectives. These skills are essential for building rapport, trust, and influence with others and are skills that have benefitted me, not just in work, but also in life.
Being a mentor helps me hone my leadership skills
As a mentor, I have to set a good example. We all know that this goes a long way in inspiring and motivating mentees, especially young people. It also gives more weight to any feedback and advice you share. I also think that if you are to lead, you have to model certain behaviours. Mentoring helps me be intentional about this.
Also, as a mentor, you need to listen to your mentees’ needs, goals, and challenges to be able to give relevant feedback and advice. And I believe that these are also things you need to learn how to do in order to be a good leader. Mentoring has helped me learn how to do these things better and has taught me to be more empathetic towards people. Having these skills now has also made me confident in assuming leadership roles in other parts of my career and in life.
Being a mentor gives me a sense of purpose and fulfilment
There is nothing more satisfying than seeing my mentees succeed and achieve their potential. I always feel so proud of their progress and achievements, and happy that I could contribute, even in a small way, to their growth. I also feel grateful for the opportunity to make a positive difference in someone else’s life. It’s an empowering thing to do and gives me a deep sense of purpose and fulfilment.
Being a mentor has made me more grateful
Mentoring also makes me appreciate what I have in life. In doing this, I am constantly reminded of how fortunate I am to have the knowledge, skills, and opportunities that I have. Being able to share with others is a real privilege and I am very much aware of that.
As a bonus, I’m also constantly learning from my mentees’ experiences, insights, and perspectives, which broaden my horizons and enrich my life – something that I am very grateful for.
You should mentor too!
Mentoring is a rewarding and fulfilling activity that can benefit both you and the people you mentor. Being in a mentoring relationship helps you and your mentoring partner/s gain new knowledge and skills, face challenges with confidence, and grow as professionals and as people.
If you’re in a position to do it, I highly encourage mentoring others. Giving back to your community and industry in this way is not only incredibly fulfilling and rewarding but it also allows you to contribute to the development of your industry by nurturing the next generation of talent. Through building genuine human connections with others and sharing knowledge and experience, we can all leave our industries better than when we entered while also giving us a sense of achievement and fulfilment.
I encourage anyone who is able to look for opportunities in your organization, professional association or online platform. I couldn’t recommend it more, you will not regret it. Let’s make the world a better place, together!
