Embedded - 336: Common Sense Is Not Common Sense

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Philana Benton (@TechnoPHILiANA) spoke with us about mentoring: how to be a good mentor, what to expect, and what not to do.  If you’d like to try mentoring, sign up for Philana’s DivTekSpace (divtekspace.org). You can do a resume review, a mock interview, give career advice, and/or refer students to your company. Philana’s home page is philanaaurelia.com We also mentioned imentor.org

Welcome to Embedded. I'm Elysia White. I'm here with Christopher White. You ever had a mentor? Ever been one? Formal or informal? Long term or short? How does it work? So many questions. Happily, this week we have Falana Benton to guide us through this process. Hi, Falana. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Could you tell us about yourself as though we met at a software conference? Sure. My name is Falana Benton. I work as an engineer in residence at Facebook as part of their EIR program. And essentially this program takes engineers from Facebook, as you can assume, and puts them into universities that generally contain a large population of BIPOC who are interested in tech. So the overall goal is we want to better prepare them to pass, of course, software engineering interviews and, I'd say, just overall career preparedness.

Could you define BIPOC? BIPOC is Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Cool. Okay. Those are not necessarily people we normally see in software engineering. Very true. We're going to do lightning round to get to know you a little better. And we're going to ask you short questions. We want short answers. And if we're behaving ourselves, we won't ask how and why. Are you sure? Are you ready?

I think so. Do you have any role models that you would want to call out? My mom, I know, super cliche, but my mom, she's a civil engineer. And Serena Williams. Which company has the best snacks in your experience? Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Microsoft? Ooh, snacks.

Or the CIA or Xerox, but I assume those weren't the best snacks. Can't talk about the CIA snacks. No. Yeah, yeah, of course you can't. Okay. I'm going to like slightly go off on a tangent because I'm a proclaimed foodie, but it won't be too long. I know this is lightning round. So Amazon, I honestly can't speak on. It's been about 10 years since I interned there, but I do remember they didn't have anything free. So strike them off the list. Yeah. Just take them off. As far as, well, I'll do food and then I'll do snacks.

So food wise, I'll probably say, well, dinner, Facebook has probably the best dinner. LinkedIn's dinner wasn't the best. Food choices, I'd probably say Facebook. They have a pizza shop. They have a barbecue shack. They have salads, a noodle bar, restaurants. They have just a whole bunch of places you can go to. Coffee, I'd probably say hands down LinkedIn. They have baristas. They have little mini coffee shops and it's free. And I was absolutely obsessed with those every day I walked into work. I'd probably say flavor-wise, even though it costs money, Microsoft, but it was really cheap. They subsidize. Yeah. And you can get a 12-ounce steak for like $4, $4.50, maybe went up by 50 cents. But as far as like snacks, Facebook,

hands down, best snacks, free, great variety, a lot of types of drinks. Yes. Okay. What's the best book book I read this past year. So qualified. It's still true. That's Michelle Obama's book, right? Yes. Okay. Just wanted to make sure there wasn't another one. Let's see. Do you have a favorite teacher from your experience? Experience as an EIR, an engineer in residence, or just in life? In life. As a student.

As a student. And they were a teacher, yeah. The question wasn't supposed to be complicated. You wrote it better. Favorite teacher you've ever had is what he wrote. Okay, favorite teacher I've ever had. Oh, boy. It would probably have to be my middle school English teacher, Mrs. McMillan. She was probably my favorite teacher just because she treated all kids the same. And she was just always encouraging us to be our best selves.

And she never compared us to like each other. And I really love that about her. Cool. Do you like to complete one project or start a dozen? What do I like to do or what do i accidentally out of the like part what happens um i love to start like 12 you know it's a lot maybe four or five um but ideally i get more satisfaction from finishing a project. Do you have a tip everyone should know? Yeah, I guess the general tip that everyone should know because I continue to learn and I refuse to believe is common sense is not always common sense.

That's so true. So very true. I signed up to be a mentor informally on Twitter, and I got some really good responses from interesting people. And now I suddenly have half a dozen new folks to mentor. And they are all BIPOC, which wasn't actually an acronym I knew a month ago. What should I know about mentoring and mentoring them in particular? Well, I'd say first and foremost, where I continue to drop the ball, so maybe I should practice what I preach, is try to level set expectations in the beginning if you can. So I think a lot of people who do ask for mentorship also,

they don't know what that means. So just thinking about like how much time you have to provide and how many mentors or mentees who have reached out to you, trying to determine some type of schedule and also being very thoughtful to provide options. Don't be open-ended if you can help it. So again, I'm still learning this. I'm like, how often would you like to meet? And sometimes a student will say, oh, you know, five times a week. And I'm like, wait, I probably should have asked, like, given that my Thursdays are open, what time on Thursdays would you like to meet?

I think that's probably one of the biggest things is both sides trying to figure out, trying to figure out like, what does mentorship actually look like? I think another thing is probably being okay with some mentees falling off. So I'd probably say over the course of maybe 10-ish years, I've had about 60, 65, maybe even closer to 80 people ask me to be a mentor. I've probably said yes to about 50 of them. And then I probably only have about like 30 who's continuously like kept the mentorship going. So I think there's sometimes you can feel really bad, like, oh, I agree too, but they haven't responded and I haven't reached out. And I think that's perfectly fine if the mentor-mentee partnership doesn't always work out. And you're using the word mentee, which I kind of hate,

but I can't think of anything better. Is that what everybody uses and we just suck it up and say mentee is a real word? Yeah. I'm sorry. That's fine. There are other words I don't like. So as you say, scheduling is important and I totally agree. And some people need more help and some people just need a little bit. I kind of feel like I'm their manager, except their goal is more set by them doing the work and their goal. And it's one-on-ones. It feels just like one-on-ones to me. My role with one-on-ones was always, did you make progress on what you said you were going to do? What do you need to finish? And wow, good job. And then the occasional technical help. Is this, I mean, I know you haven't met any of my mentees and you haven't, I haven't talked much about them at all, but is this, what else should I be doing?

I mean, I think overall, I wish at one managers in my life, including the too many internships I've had. And I can say only about three or four of them were really thoughtful about what is going on with your career and also, you know, within the company. So kudos for that. I really love how you framed it that way as, you know, that's what all managers should be doing. In my experience, and I will say my experience generally is limited to computer engineers and software engineers. I'd probably say it's a majority of the students who, or if not all, I'm trying to think of anyone who wasn't in that space, have asked me to be a mentor. And so it generally does boil down to literally what you said, right?

It's, well, I would say maybe less about goals. It's more so about, I'm thinking about doing this. How do you feel about this? Were you ever in this position? Can you give me more details on what you did and why? And of course, technical questions. I can't get this running. I have no idea what this area is. I looked up on all these different websites. I'm still confused. But generally, I would say it's less technical because I feel like a lot of students or their peers have each other and it's more about either coaching or mentoring. So there's coaching and sponsoring and mentoring. I'm sure there are some other words. Are there real differences between these or are these all just helping the person do what they want to do and helping them be the best engineer they can be? I will say I do have a few mentees who are not BIPOC.

So I would say my mentoring shows up less there, and it's pretty much more about sponsoring or coaching. So how I envisioned it, and I also took a course, Leadership as a coach. So if you think about mentoring, mentoring a lot of times is you're giving advice or giving your input based off of an experience that you and your mentee share. Coaching, you, as much as you can, do not want to give advice. You pretty much want to help that person create a picture of the full situation so that they can make their informed decision. Sponsorship is more so bringing in opportunities lot of times is just simply not there. So if you can open more doors or introduce them to someone that they otherwise would not have been introduced to, that's super helpful. Can't we just call it all mentoring?

Because that's what I want to do. Well, I don't know's what I want to do. Well, I don't, I don't know because I was formulating a question and haven't quite got there, but I'm thinking back to my own career. I never really had a formal mentor of any kind. And it's almost new to me to hear about these formal mentors. I, we had some, I think at Fitbit, we had a mentor program where you could sign up to have a mentee and work with them. But prior to that, it was always, oh, older colleague takes you under their wing and, you know, subtly guides you. Maybe you don't have formal meetings. And so this sounds a lot better. So it does seem like having the definitions and the distinction between those kinds of things is important.

I could see that. But, I mean, how do you... I can see coaching, because coaching is a lot of letting them figure it out and just asking the questions to shine light. Which is what I'm... When I think of my mentors or people who I call my mentors, that's what I think of. Yeah. And they aren't really giving you advice so much as telling you exactly what you told them. They're providing a mirror. Socratic method. What do you think the answer is? I don't know. You tell me, senior person. But I think it would be hard to be a mentor and not also be a coach and a sponsor.

Yeah. Okay. I agree. I agree. I think with coaching versus mentoring, mentoring is very much helpful if you don't know what you don't know, if that makes sense. So my mentor, when I was at Microsoft, hopefully maybe Sue will be listening to this. She was very helpful. And also, to be fair, this is not everyone's situation because we worked at the same company. We worked at the same team. So therefore, it was very easy to grab lunch with her every month or so. And that was very important because she brought

up a lot of things that I just did not know that I should be thinking about. And I remember one particular conversation we were having, and it wasn't necessarily mentoring. It was just like, let's go to lunch. So she was discussing what features she should take to put her in a better position to become a principal software engineer. And up until that point, I literally had no idea that there should have been a strategy. I was like, oh, I'm just going to take every feature that's given to me and code it up. I didn't know that there was a strategy on like, how do you get promoted? And so when it comes to coaching, generally the mentee comes to you with a problem. And yes, you can also introduce

ideas that they don't know to ask, but I feel like mentoring also provides, I don't know, just like more so over personalized interaction. It also brings, you know, comfort to the mentee as well because they trust you and you trust them more and that relationship can improve greatly. Not saying that coaching doesn't, but yeah. Do you think that level of trust is either easier with somebody outside your company versus inside? I think the level of trust comes with how open the mentor is. And I say that like question mark because I'm thinking about all of my experiences and like what made me feel comfortable with one mentor versus the other. And I think to, yeah, I think it was just honesty, right. And just being very transparent and just being very clear that one of the goals of this relationship, this mentorship is that, you know, getting to know me better and also

me getting to know them better and just being, and having fluid conversations, even if they can be uncomfortable. It's just like the fact of the mentors is willing to be uncomfortable to better support me gives me a very big signal that, OK, this is someone who I can confide in and who I can trust. All of my new mentoring relationships are, I assume, going to be long-term. And I plan on spending like an hour a week with them for a few weeks and then drifting out to a couple hours a month for about a year and then monthly meetings until they go off and say, I don't need you anymore. Is that realistic? I mean, you said it sounded like you have relationships for many years. I kind of think it's about a year relationship for me, maybe a little more. Yeah. Relationship is very hard to define. So I've had people I've mentored maybe 10-ish years ago. They dropped off five years ago and literally I've had about two or

three mentees who I hadn't spoken to in about five or six years reach out to me as far as like support for another role or did I know anyone that could refer them at this particular company? So I guess I continue to count them as mentees. But I'd say generally, I'd probably keep in contact with my mentees once or twice every three to six months. I will say like first starting out, I was super ambitious too. I was like, we can meet every week for an hour. And at first students are like, yes. But then I also realized, and I was the student, is usually the students who reach out for mentors are go-getters and generally don't have that much time to meet like once every single week. So what I ended up doing is I told them, we can schedule for once a week.

If you have nothing to talk about, it's perfectly fine. Just cancel and then we can wait, you know, for the next week. And I felt like students were a lot, were at more ease with that suggestion because I remember being a student and someone wanted to mention me every single week. That slightly stretched me out because some weeks I was like, I have literally nothing to talk about. Should I cancel? Will this person think that I don't care if I cancel? So I think always, if you would like, start off with the week, but just providing that option to narrow it down to once every two weeks or, you know, once a month. But I am realizing that a lot of mentor or mentees rather are doing a lot of things. And so therefore they usually pop

up when something happens or if they need advice or they have an opportunity that comes up and they kind of want some guidance, some coaching or some mentorship. Yeah. And like I said, it's going to be a lot of time in the first few weeks for me because part of it's getting to know them. Part of it's trying to understand what they're looking for in the relationship, whether it's pure technical mentoring and I should go look at the boards they're looking at or whether it's more people mentoring and I should figure out if what they're telling me is what they really want to talk about, which is always fun, but that's normal. It is a big commitment and it's one I happily made, although I'm not sure that the next person to contact me will get a happily yes. We'll see.

Actually, one of the reasons to do this show is to get some people out there who want to be mentors and get them signed up to mentor people, which brings me around to DivTechSpace. Yes. Could you tell me about that? So DivTechSpace was actually founded by me and my co-founder, which happens to be my sister. And essentially, we wanted to create an online community that's essentially created as a safe space for BIPOC students interested in tech or the tech industry. So I think that's one thing we've had to explain multiple times. You can do marketing and tech as well, or finance. You don't have to necessarily do engineering. That's my sister's specialty. I can pretty much support engineering

only. But the idea is to have a space where you can connect with other BIPOC students, have transparent discussions about, you know, what are some of the issues that you've had working? Like what, you know, how can I wear my hair? Will I get judged for this? Can I get judged for that? And I think also just being able to utilize basic resources for, you know, to prepare themselves for their careers and their job offers and their internships. And it isn't mentoring so much. When I asked if you were looking for mentors, you said volunteers. Yes. What? Are we adding something? So like you were saying, mentoring is very much time consuming and it's not technically for everyone. But I also have a lot of people who have come up to me who say, I do want to support

BIPOC students, but I don't, I can't, I'm not in a position to donate large amounts of time on a regular schedule. So what are some of the ways that I can help support the BIPOC community? And so this has been brought up to me. This has also been brought up to my co-founder. This is also something we've noted when we visited various universities that basic resources such, basic resources such as like a resume review or a job referral, right? Like thinking similar to like sponsorship are really great ways that you can give back and support and do it on your own time. So we encourage volunteers because you can choose your time schedule.

And also simply because we think a lot of companies do and organizations do a great job of providing, you know, mentoring programs. Which companies provide mentoring programs? I'm perfectly happy with my informal methods, but I know there must be more formal ones that are good. Interestingly, I know iMentor exists. I believe that's high school students.

I think mentoring.org. But to be completely honest, a lot of the mentorship programs happen internally within various companies. I can't say I personally know a company that allows someone to sign up for a mentorship role for college students. It might be out there, but generally speaking, I've seen just like companies doing their own personal initiatives. That's tough because you want to work at the company, but you can't work until you want a mentor to help you work at the company, but you can't do that until you work at the company and the chickens and the eggs get all unhappy. Pretty much. Yes. Yes. So with DivTech, I could sign up to DivTech space. Sorry, I shouldn't

shorten it. I can sign up to do a resume review or I can sign up to do a mock interview for 45 minutes or 15. And then how do I give feedback in a way that's useful? So the way I do it is you want to be honest, but you also want to encourage improvements. So I'll say from personal experience, I've known some people who have given mock interviews to students who are interested in software engineering roles and might give them an extremely easy, you know, a very easy question. And when they solve it correctly, they're like jumping up and down and like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing. Good job. And I'm thinking to myself, but that question will never be asked in an interview, like maybe as a warmup question,

but they're definitely going to get a more difficult question. So in thinking about mock interviews, whatever role it is, it doesn't necessarily have to be software engineering. I think it's first and foremost, be very realistic about the types of questions that will be asked. Making sure that you point out the positives of how the interview went and ways to improve to kind of take it to the next level to be better prepared for a real interview. Interview techniques, questions, style differ so much from company to company. Is there good advice for how to set up a mock interview so that you kind of feel like you're preparing someone for whatever they might face? Yeah. So generally what I've done is I seek out advice from people who interview from different companies. And I try to get a basis on

like, generally speaking, what do all companies look for, right? So it's like, if you're thinking about software engineering, I've never met a company that didn't hire for software engineers that didn't like communication, right? Like no one said, well, you know, you, you explained to me too much, your thought process, we don't want to take you on. So I try to figure out, OK, what and talking to colleagues from different companies, like what in general, like does, you know, your interview entail? Like generally, what are you looking for? And so when I do give this feedback, I always make sure to cover the basis of what most companies are looking for. And then sometimes I do add a little tidbit to the sides like, well, specifically, you know, Facebook is looking for this. Or when I was at Microsoft or specifically Microsoft, you know, looks for this. So I do try to give general advice and tailored advice. That makes sense.

One of the reasons you started this was kind of what I ran into is that I tweeted offering to be a mentor and I did get a number of responses and felt overwhelmed. And but that's not you're trying to avoid that. How? We're how do we avoid that? Well, the biggest. The main way is we like to keep our volunteers anonymous. So if you sign up for the platform, you give yourself an alias. We do not show your email address. And we do ask for a picture though, a picture that generally doesn't show up on the internet because you can now image search these days. So a picture that maybe you've taken 30 minutes before you uploaded it. But that is the goal is to keep a person anonymous unless they choose not to be anonymous. So even with the resume reviews, we've had it set

up so that we give advice like in order to review this resume, we encourage you to open up like an incognito tab because most people are signed into their Gmail. So, yes, if you want to provide comments with your name, you can, but it will give away your, you know, give away who you are. So we try to make sure that you feel empowered to support and encourage students, but also don't feel overwhelmed by feeling the need to respond. It's so weird to me to be anonymous. And yet, I can totally see it's so much less stress to be able to just do a resume review. I mean, half of that is checking for typos and the other half is making sure you understand what they did. And, you know, balancing the wordiness of I did these 10 things with the conciseness of it should be a short resume. So do you offer advice for the mentees?

We do. So we have a forum for, you know, students to converse with each other. Again, safe space. So they too are anonymous. So they think of, you know, a fun username. You know, they're not required to upload a picture. And we also provide blogs as well. So we do have a few people who are already signed up to do blogs, but just talking about their experiences in tech, you know, if they've had microaggressions and also providing that opportunity to give their input and allowing students to comment on those blogs and have a conversation. So students are encouraged to, yes, to talk to each other and converse and get advice and ask questions. And before I would get to see a resume as a volunteer, they've already gotten a little bit of instruction about what's going on?

Have they already had a review? Have they already met with career counselors sort of things? Yeah, that's a good question. So our target schools, I think we're starting off, we've narrowed it down to like six or seven schools. So to answer your first question, yes, We do set them up with like basic steps or tips on how to create a resume. And so you have to pretty much do these steps or pass this minimum bar to even request a resume review. At the end of the day, the reality is everyone knows that, you know, you should probably have a resume, but if you Google like resume tips or how to create a resume, it's like over a million. And it's all sorts of advice that is all contradictory. Exactly.

So it's like, okay, decision centers, which to be honest, I did not know was the thing because both of the institutions that I graduated from for undergrad had amazing career centers. So when I started recruiting while working for various companies, and so my sister as well, she does recruiting, we noticed that there were some schools who their career center was not in a space to provide them the information that was needed, whether it was outdated or just that basic, you don't know what you don't know. So some people, it's like schools in small cities and, you know, hey, we're hiring for a career center, you know, role. Okay. Well, you know, I need a job, so I'm going to take it. However, it's just like not fully understanding what like a career center entails. So we are looking for schools that need that support of which they're not necessarily getting at the institutions of which they matriculate.

See, I went to a school with an amazingly dedicated career counselor. And I mean, reading about DivTechSpace, I was just like, well, isn't your career counselor doing this for you? I mean, colleges want their graduates to have jobs, but I can see how that falls through the cracks sometimes. Yes. Yes. Very much so. And then also just, again, lacking resources. So you have a lot of schools that just aren't on the radar for major companies. And so when I've gone to recruit and when my co-founder has gone to recruit, we get a lot of questions that could be answered with an online forum, but because a lot of these students have never met someone from a Microsoft or a Facebook or an EY or a Deloitte or any of these major companies, we get an influx

of questions and all of them are very similar. So yeah, there's a lot of things to be addressed. And I feel like I pretty much became privy to once I started recruiting because I did not know. Like you, I went at institutions that had major companies always there for the career fair. So I just didn't have these issues in undergrad. And so it's a problem of access. Yes, absolutely. It's just like giving students access because you can clearly see the gaps of where they didn't get access. So prime example, like when I was recruiting for Microsoft, sometimes I would go to these schools and the students were there, they were

ready, they were dressed, they applied to school, they did the SAT, the ACT. So the grit was there. But then when I'd see their resume, I'm like, wait a minute. So clearly there's something missing. There's no way you can be overly prepared for five things and then you just got lazy on the resume. Something's not quite adding up. So yeah, it's just basically access is what is needed to help propel students, you know, from one place to the next. And so who, what's the minimum level of volunteer? I mean, who can be a volunteer? Do you ask them to be managers or working engineers or what are you asking for volunteers? Volunteers would be any person who has been successful. And I know that's like, wait, what? But very true. Could you define successful for us? hey, I haven't taken the traditional path. I don't have a degree. Can I still volunteer for

resume review? And I was like, absolutely. You have achieved partial success in obtaining a goal, and that's a process that students would benefit from. So I think it's just like, and they're also in a professional space, which again, it's like you were saying access. So it's less about, it can be less about your background, but more so like where you are now. And can you answer a question of which like, I would never be able to ask someone had I not been on this platform. So the bar actually, it isn't very high and the commitment isn't very high. And yet you can still make a pretty big impact if you can help someone realize their dream by just pointing out, oh, this is how I went about it, and that may help you.

I have a question. There's a fair number of people who become successful through a series of steps, which perhaps were accidental or luck, or, you know, you see it with serial entrepreneurs all the time. You know, I did this, so I'll do this at my next company. And of course it will work when it turns out they had nothing to do with the success of the first company. I guess I'm asking, how can you filter out people who took actual steps that were meaningful and people who just kind of bumbled into their position? Hey, I resemble that. But you see what I'm saying?

You don't want somebody giving advice that's just random. Your resume should only say, I want a job. That's what worked for me. Yeah, that's very fair. Um, so I guess in thinking about advice, um, you can also use, so you can provide advice and you can also provide information. And so as a volunteer, you can do either. So despite your background, if you work for a particular company and I believe there was someone, I forgot what companies it was, but they didn't, they ended up not finishing,

um, their undergraduate career, but they could still answer the question, what is the day in the life of, you know, a production engineer, right? And so you can provide details. I mean, technically, yes, it could be biased because you're looking through your lens, but that's less about advice and more so about, you know, providing information. So I agree. There is a there you do have to be careful on like who provides what. And so also having the conversation of if you do want to do resume review, have you ever done resume review before? would be like a fair question to ask. Because in that case, you are essentially, you know, providing advice on how you should change, you know, your resume. I think also keeping in mind though, you know,

people will always have their own ways of reviewing resumes. But if you're working with someone who literally has nowhere to start, they're going to be in a much better place after they have those resume reviews than if they didn't get any at all, or if they relied on their career center, which has not been able to support them in the way that they need to be supported. You said reviews. I think that was important because even if I felt like I couldn't do a resume review or I wasn't sure if I'd be good at it, knowing that somebody has multiple would help. Fair. Yeah.

You have the option to do multiple. Max of, I think, three, I believe. As a student? Yes. One of my new mentees on Friday admitted she was seeing another mentor. I found that pretty funny because I don't think it should be one perspective, whether it's resume review or mentoring as a whole. Because as Chris pointed out, there's always an element of chance and personal views that lead you to where you're going. Is there any way we can, that's especially hard for me working with BIPOC people, because I know

I'm super privileged and I grew up in an area that it was poor, but I was near places I could get to. And I just, how do I be helpful to them? How do I not say, oh, well, it worked for me. If it doesn't work for you, you must be wrong. I think it's perfectly, I, to be honest, I pass off sometimes mentees to like other colleagues who have the time or ask another colleague if they have time to have a conversation because I think that's real and fair. So sometimes students ask me, should I get my PhD? I'm like, I have no idea. I stopped with my master's. You should

probably talk to someone who did have their PhD. Or'll say like, hey, you know, what was your experience working with this company or with this organization? And so I would not have had the best experience. So a lot of times, yes, it is being self-aware and just being honest. Well, I could tell you my experience. It wasn't the best. If I do tell you this, I do want you to talk to someone who had a really good experience with this company or organization, you know, just to give you a more informed decision. But I think overall, yes, sometimes mentorship, you'll have to, you know, pass off to someone who can provide advice that may be a little more closer or relevant to the

experience that they're having. But I feel like a lot of times it simply just comes down to just like good old sponsorship. Yeah. It's just, yeah. And as you mentioned, people do, you pass some mentees off, whether it's just once or whether it's a whole bunch of times, because the experience is different. Do you feel like a clearinghouse? Like you have mentees and you have other people who want to be mentors and, and now you're providing a dating service? You know, I've been doing it probably for like the past five or 10 years. Like I have been, which I've recently had to start saying no to, but I have been passed

off mentees to me. And I'm like, I have way too many. I can't take on another one. But I've been doing it for a while and I honestly don't mind it. It's just, yes, it can take time, but just like seeing how students or mentees just like take the tools you provide and run with it. It's just, you know, very refreshing and it makes me very happy, you know, to see. Oh, yes. I mean, I have a question here. What do mentors get out of this? And it's a stupid question because what you get out of it is they succeed and you get to

play a little part in that. And of course they succeed on their own merits, but there's some joy in watching someone succeed just a little faster because you helped them. Yes. And interestingly, like word travels, like I've always just been very helpful because that is my personality. But when people come up to me and say, oh, I remember when you told me this, like if you ever need anything, if you ever need a job, you know, if you ever need a volunteer, you know, I can help you. And so I think that's also the joy as well, is it like, it does come back. So like whenever I need volunteers to help out

students, I have all these people who I've mentored or, you know, taught in the past who like pretty much come in droves, just really ready to help and support other people. And I think that's the beauty of it as well. And it's something I didn't expect simply because like, you know, when I give back or when I volunteer, the expectation is that my happiness is seeing you excel. It's not necessarily well, because in five years I can ask something from you and I'll get it from you. So you do get some nice, you know, residual effects that aren't necessarily intended. But it's not transactional.

Yeah, correct. Yes. Yes, it's not transactional. And you end up with an expanded network. And, you know, I know lots of people who were junior people when I was a senior person who are now senior people, and they're just colleagues, not, you know. Right, exactly. And that's the beautiful thing is when they go from mentees to colleagues. So mean, he just tries to mentor everyone around him. But he asked, don't you agree? I mean, he's always up for resume review. He's just so nice. Just have this image of him running around, you know. He asked about things to avoid when mentoring. Um, sure. I think one of the biggest things that, to be honest, I've encountered, I've done and have seen happen is to try and not make assumptions. And so I think just like, especially if you're thinking about like, I want to support someone who is BIPOC, it's like you, you want to have this mindset that you want to support

and not necessarily want to save. And so I know for me personally, I've encountered mentors sometimes who assume that I've had this type of background. And so they kind of shift their thinking into, I need to save this person. And I'm like, I don't need saving know, don't assume. And one of the ways you can do that is just simply getting to know someone before you start mentoring them. So getting an understanding of, you know, what background they've had, you know, where do they come from? What things do they really like? So you can get a better picture of them, a better like idea of who they are before you start thinking about, okay, you know, how can I support them versus, you know, how can I save them? So it's happened to me a few times.

So I've had to like, you know, level set the mentorship relationship and give them my background so that they're pretty much aware that I'm a fully capable person. There's just some gaps to access that I need filled. I see that. I see that in something I'm trying not to do, which is as I talk about hardware to my mentees, I'm trying not to assume about hardware, the cost. Should I recommend this board because it's expensive or that board because it's cheap, but they'd be better off with this board. And so I just, you know, present that cost is always an engineering problem and hopefully let them tell me what the boundaries are. That's hard. I mean, it's really hard. And it's hard about all kinds of things. Just not making the assumption that someone needs me to fix it. I'm such an engineer. I want to help this person and I don't really know them very well, but I have these preconceived notions about their life and life of people like them.

So I can, you know, be a savior and that that's exactly what you don't want to do. I know. And it's hard sometimes to get out of that mindset. So I can see how the saving, yes, I can see how that would be a problem. And it does seem like something to avoid. Yes. Do you have other things to avoid? If it's, I always try to avoid giving advice. If I can help it, if they're asking me like directly, stop trying to coach me, just tell

me what I should do. I'll probably go back to mentoring. But just because I just feel like we all have biases, right? And so it comes from experience, you know, experiences, it comes from decisions. And so because I can't catch every single bias, I do try to shy away from giving advice unless it's like directly happened to me before or I'm trying to coach them and they're like, I just, I don't know what to do. Can you please just tell me a situation in which this happened to you, how you solved it and how I should think about this? So I'm like,

okay, all right, fine. I'll give you advice. But I will say, yeah, to limit just like bias coming into the picture, I do try to limit advice, but I do give it and I do give it a lot because a lot of times that's what mentees want. They're like, I know you've been a professional, so stop holding out and tell me everything you know. Yeah. Technical advice is easy for me to give. Personal advice I tend to frame as something like this happened to me and this is what I did and this is what I wish I'd done. Now, what do you want to do and how do you want to do it? And hopefully they build their own advice.

I mean, I think that's common advice giving for me is that I'm willing to tell you how to phrase an email, sure. But whether or not you should send it might be up to you. Yeah. So back when I was saying, you know, common sense is not common sense. Yes, that is the way I do it as well. But I've also heard of, you know, mentees who have encountered mentors who don't do that. So I'm glad you pointed that out where you said, you know, this is what I did or this is what I would do. This is why I would do it. This is why I did it. And here are some of

the implications of this decision. And I think that's a fair process to go when mentoring, but I've witnessed mentors who didn't do that. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And I can't say I've been perfect about it. I mean, yeah.'ve been perfect about it. I mean. Yeah. Every day you learn something. Every day I learn something. I wish I could say I knew everything, but every day I learn something too. I'm learning to be a better mentor.

Do your mentees ever come to you with problems that you're uncomfortable giving them advice on? Something maybe personal or personal merged with career or just you're not, you don't feel equipped to deal with or is uncomfortable? How do you, how do you kind of shift the conversation to maybe giving them advice on how to find help elsewhere for those kinds of things, if necessary? I think just being honest. So there has been times where I have had students pretty much telling me that I'm literally having a mental breakdown If you don't want to explore, why? I personally feel like I'm not professionally equipped to support you in the way that I need to support you. But if you just need a listening ear, I'm here. But I do always try to...

I am honest about my capabilities, But I also am supportive and I do try to encourage, you know, people to go, you know, in a direction that they, they may not, you know, think it's helpful for them, but I'm, I think to myself, well, it's definitely won't be helpful if they don't do anything. So, you know, trying something is better than them not doing anything. So I do try to, if it is an uncomfortable, not necessarily uncomfortable situation because I hardly ever get uncomfortable, but like concerning situation, I guess, is when I'm very honest about my capabilities, but then also working to brainstorm, like, what are some ways that I can, you know, help you find the support that you need? That's important because, I mean, I've had mentorship relationships where I've wanted to say, look, I'm not a therapist. I know you need to get all this out, but that's not what I'm here for.

That's not the best use of my time, and it's not the best use of your time. So please go find a therapist. I mean, it's never been that direct. In a nice way, yeah. I found Captain Awkward. It's a website blog that has scripts for how to deal with, I'm not your therapist, go find a therapist sorts of problems. And that's always been really useful to me, but that's more in a general, not mentoring thing. But to be fair, it's, you know, you want to support the students the best way that you can. So you really aren't, you know, a therapist. It's less about like, you know, I don't want to hear this, but like, I literally can't help you in the way that you can be helped. And it would be a disservice for me to even act like your therapist if I've never even, you know, taking any type of course or like learned any type of expertise around this space? Yes, I have had conversations about mental health.

And sometimes that is important to say, my mental health is not always good. And there are things you can do. I can't tell you what those things are, but you should see a doctor. Sorry, going off on a tangent. Let's see, there's some other listener questions. Thomas asks for suggestions to find BIPOC mentees. I mean, DivTechSpace is a place. Are there others you would recommend? So literally what you were saying before, like the chicken or the egg, I'm pretty sure there's ones that exist, but I think that's a fair question. And I feel like it goes both ways, like how, especially a free resource. So I do know some resources that give you like a full, you know, training program, but I don't know if they're taking, I think they're looking for like specific types of mentors, like from a specific role or from a specific company. So I can't say I know of any like volunteer opportunities to be a mentor, especially for college students, which is very

interesting. Like I remember when, before we started DivTech, we were, me and my co-founder were trying to find, like, you know, a central place to do so that wasn't outside, like, a company, you know, a mentorship program that's just sponsored by a company. And, again, like you were saying, it's just like, well, if I don't have access to those companies, then how would I get a mentor? And so I think that's a fair question to ask because I haven't been able to find like a company that does like solely that. It's usually high school students or students from, you know, within a particular area, but not like on a like national scale. That seems like a gap. Yes. Hopefully somebody will email us and we'll have an answer for that the next time Chris and I have an email show. Yes. And if they do, please send it my way so I can list it on our site because we have a lot of paid experience or companies.

But yeah, it would be nice to see if there is one that is free for students. And especially engineering. I mean, this show is more about engineering. So are there good resources for learning more about being a mentor? Yes. I would say like the top, I know this is terribly to say, but I would say like the top, I know this is terrifying to say, but I would say like the top 10 links, if you search it, honestly are helpful. And I don't say that about a lot of things that you look for. I'm like, you will go into a rabbit hole. But there are like the top 10. Like if you do search it, you can get a lot of good information from the top five or six. Personally, I love experiences.

So if I've known someone who has done mentoring for a while, I do a coffee chat with them and ask them just like, what are some of the things that they've found helpful and what are some of the things that they didn't find helpful? That brings up a question from Casey8APF, which is, is mentoring remotely different than face-to-face? I think so. I think it's harder to, it's not saying it's impossible, but it's harder to establish like a relationship of trust if it's not face-to-face. Because generally, if it's face-to-face, you're probably going to get coffee, you're probably going to grab food. You can better look at someone's interactions or how they respond to a question or notice how they move. And so there's a lot more information you can analyze from seeing someone face-to-face that is harder to determine virtually.

But who's to say that virtually doesn't work? I will say all of the mentors that I've had, I've met at least once. I probably can't say I've had a pure virtual mentee. That's fair. Times are changing, particularly right now. They do. I have had virtual mentoring relationships, mentees, and it's different. One thing that is good is this morning I had a technical mentee and we were both surfing

around the internet trying to solve some problems as he's figuring out how to build something. I can suggest, okay, let's go to SparkFun and search here and here are the things that I would do to figure out how parts go together. And it's all very technical. It's not the general, what do you want to do with your career mentoring? But that sort of thing, it's kind of fun to do together. And I don't want to give him all the answers. I don't want to say, I think you should build this. I want to give him the tools to say, if you want to build this, here's how I'd go about thinking about it. And that you can do online. And it's more fun to do online than in person because you're surfing the internet together. Let's see. And oh, and advice for mentoring. I wanted to put another plug for Camille Fournier's

Path to Management book. It had a lot of good things about being a peer mentor and peer leadership, which I think goes together. Do you have people who have been categorized more as friends or peers and then become mentors? Absolutely. I, for a while, did play with the idea of obtaining a PhD in computer science. And I ultimately opted to not do that because I had conversations with some of my peers and I just wasn't ready to donate that much more time in school. I do have peers that have stayed in technical roles and switched to other roles. And I've had conversations with them about why they did that.

What are some of the implications of it? If they had to change something, what would that look like? And that's also helped inform me as well. That's actually one of my reasons why I decided to go back to school and get my MBA is because I did have conversations with various software engineers who decided to go to business school. And after having those conversations with my peers, I realized that it was a path that I ultimately did, you know, want to take. Did your peers know they were acting as your mentor? Do you always have to use the word? Probably not. It was probably just, you know, advice. Why did you do this?

Let's grab coffee or let's hop on a call. And I'd, you know, love to better understand your thought process on your career trajectory and why you chose to go that route. So yeah, I guess I don't... Yeah, it's hard because it's like peer mentor, I guess. I honestly never really thought of it that way, but essentially that's what they were. I think it's interesting too, because I also can't answer this question. Did I decide they weren't peer mentors because they were also my friends? And then does that mean that your mentor can't be your friend? Because I consider my mentor, my friend. And so that just opened up a wormhole of just like, I don't want to, I can't even

like fathom having that conversation, especially now. But yeah, that's very interesting. I would argue, yes, they were my friend and my peer mentor, not to say that those are mutually exclusive. And not to say that every relationship that is mentoring has to be called a mentor-mentee relationship. You don't have to use the words in order to have the relationship. True. Yeah, I agree. Totally agree. Let's see. We've talked a little bit about how we find mentors, although that's been a little unsatisfying. So we need to find ways to find mentors outside our companies and outside our colleges. Axit asked how to give feedback so that the mentee doesn't lose morale.

I mean, I think that's a general life skill, right? Very true. How to give feedback. I should have negative feedback. Positive is pretty easy. I always do the like, this is where I've seen you excel and this is where you can take it to the next step. And so I always provide, I guess what you would call quote unquote negative feedback, like a way you can improve or kind of get yourself unstuck, I guess. So, and I always give feedback in like weird or not weird, but like non-traditional ways, whether, you know, my mentees or my students know it or not.

So like when my students do have technical questions or how come I can't get this to work or, you know, I can't I don't understand this error log. Like I will help support them and kind of like inching them forward and then also giving them positive feedback on like if you get stuck in this, you know, here again, like here are some ways to kind of unstick yourself. So that's a positive, you know, way of saying like, you know, you could, this is how you improve your, you know, problem solving or debugging skills instead of saying you're like a terrible,

you're a terrible problem solver. You can always think of just like ways to provide feedback in a way that encourages them to take, you know, their learnings a step further to improve them. I always go back to you want to be honest, but kind. Yes. There's no reason you shouldn't be kind. You're not competing with them. You're not. They aren't some, the goal

is, yeah, I'm going to stop there. No, I totally agree. But I love the fact that you point out honesty because I feel like that's sometimes where you can, and even sometimes I have to, I have to check myself and be honest because sometimes I do have students who are like, I'm interested in, you know, in, you know, computer science. I'm interested in like very glaring, you know, gaps on like, on, on where they need to be in order to be a successful software engineer. And I do have to catch myself sometimes because I don't want to over flood this person with like, okay, well, I love how you started off and you, you know, have a, you know, fundamental idea of what you want to do, but you need to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. That's just not-

That's exactly. One of my new mentees, that's exactly the problem I'm having is I don't want to flood him, but where he says he wants to go and where he is, there's a big gap. And so I just want to make sure he sees the gap. He doesn't need me to fill it. He doesn't need all of it, but yes, you do have to, to be wise about that. What do you do? I mean, do you, do you go ahead and list everything or do you just say there's a road? Um, I'm, I'm, I do it in like how I teach. I generally do it like how I teach, but I think it's also holding your mentee accountable. And so I think the reality is, is if you do not necessarily have to give them the full path, but like giving them steps and also looking to see like, are they putting an effort to make these steps. Because to be honest, I have had some mentees that I unfortunately had to let go because I was clear that like, this is the mentorship is between two people.

I can't, like, I need to see, you know, some effort on your side to make sure that this grows. And sometimes you just don't get that. So I think one of the biggest things is like, okay, yes, we have a long road, but like, if I lay out steps, what does it look like? And are you trying to take them? And then I think sometimes it is having a conversation of like coaching and asking, you know, what are your motivations behind wanting to do computer science? And I think you can get some honest answers or even having students think about, you know, is this something I really want? So I know for one particular mentee, they wanted to do computer science and they're like, oh, I want to be a software developer. So I'm like, okay, cool.

But then when I started working with them, there were some large gaps. And when I was trying to help diminish those gaps, there was a lot of pushback or the student wasn't doing what they were supposed to be doing. So if I say, okay, you want to improve your coding skills, I need you to do these five questions and then provide the feedback on what you did, where you got stuck, what was was the answer and what can you do differently to get to that answer without getting stuck? You know, sometimes you see students just, you know, not doing that. So then the question becomes, well, do you really want to do computer science? Were you pushed into it? Did you see, you know, dollar signs? And now you're like, oh, I want to do software engineering because tech is the cool thing to do. And I want to make a lot of money. Or is it like, you know, you do want to do computer science. I've asked you to do these things, but you're constrained on time. So you weren't able to do it. So then like, what does that look like as far as, you know, your goal to become a software

developer? So I've, to be honest, have had to have some, you know, tough conversations on like, is computer science, you know, a career that makes sense for who you are, who you want to be and your strengths. And sometimes an answer to be completely honest is no. Going to computer science when you don't want to be there is definitely a recipe for sadness. Oh, is that what happened to me? No. I wanted to ask you like, you know, inspiring story behind that. Like my sister and I were like, oh, diversity, tech, div tech. But if we spell it with the C-H, it seems like a technical like solutions, like type company. So we were like, well, we're millennials. What do millennials love to do? Oh, make up words and change the spelling of words like TikTok.

So we decided to put a K instead of a CH at the end of DivTech. And that is the honest story behind it. All right. You might want to make up a better story. I like it. All right. You might want to make a better story. I like it. It works. It works. It works very well.

Felana, it's been wonderful to talk to you. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? Yes. I think don't shy away from mentoring if you want to do it. Don't shy away from mentoring if you want to do it. Don't shy away from uncomfortable conversations. Take it as a learning experience. There's nothing wrong with being a mentor and also learning because also, you know, the mentee is learning as well. We all are.

I hope. Yes, hopefully. Our guest has been Falana Benton, engineer in residence at Facebook and co-founder of DivTechSpace. D-I-V-T-E-K space. And that's.org. They are looking for volunteers. You can sign up on the website and hopefully get to talk to a student or two this fall. Thanks, Falana. Thank you.

Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Big thank you to our Patreon supporters for Philana's mic and to the supporter Slack group for questions. And thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on embedded.fm. Now, if you want to be a mentor and you're on Twitter, I recommend tweeting. You're up for it.fm. Now, if you want to be a mentor and you're on Twitter, I recommend tweeting. You're up for it. Your DMs are open and you want to try it. It was totally worth it. It's still totally worth it. But don't email me for mentoring, okay? I want to, I can't. I'll just pawn you off on Svek anyway. Go ahead and just email him. And now a quote to leave you with from Michelle Obama's Becoming.

I think it's one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child. What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that's the end. Embedded is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering. It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive money from them. At this time, our sponsors are Logical Elegance and listeners like you.