The Art of Mentorship (Part 2)
If you've ever tried to mentor another developer in the art of software craftsmanship, you know how maddening the experience can be – why can't we just crack open someone's skull and dump information in? When are they going to invent those brain rods from the Matrix where we can download expert-level skills directly into our brains?
In the absence of brain downloads, learn the next best thing – a practical data-driven mentorship technique devised from years of running mentorship experiments on developers, reading tons of cognitive science books, and lots and lots of practice.
This is part 2 of a 2-part workshop, intended to give you hands on practice with the tools and techniques you need to accelerate skill development of a team member. Even if you didn't attend the first session, feel free to attend the second.
In this second session, we'll discuss how to directly teach first principles using data-driven learning tools (OSS), and the key indicators to look for in the data that give you clues as to what decision-making skills need improvement.
We'll discuss three optimization principles and the relevant indicators of skill gaps in the data:
- The Haystack Principle - Optimize for small batch sizes or “haystacks”
- The Code Sandwich Principle - Optimize for low diagnostic difficulty
- The Waxy-Coating Principle - Optimize the signal to noise ratio of automated tests
We'll run three hands-on coding labs with each coding principle, review the data collected during the coding exercise as a group, and discuss an explicit strategy to teach these principles, and facilitate practice during our everyday jobs.
About Arty Starr
Arty Starr has been a software engineer for 20+ years and is a researcher and pioneer of new theories of the developer's cognitive experience that help us recognize how developers' experiences are changing with AI. Her theories of developer momentum and troubleshooting help us see software development through an ecological lens, recognizing it as a living activity in motion and the living capacities of care and cognition that support this motion. Her aim is to bring heart, human-centric values, and agency to the craft of software development so we can build toward the type of world we want to live in. With richer perception and by recognizing what matters, we can light a path to a future of thriving habitats where humans and AI can collaborate well and thrive together.
Arty is the author of Idea Flow, a speaker, thought leader, and artist who loves mixing ideas across disciplines into a fusion of creativity to help make the world a better place through her projects.
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