We mentor early-career developers. Here’s what they need to succeed.
Published: 2020-08-19 21:49:34

---
title: We mentor early-career developers. Here’s what they need to succeed.
published: true
description: How The Collab Lab sets early-career developers up to succeed
tags: 
cover_image: https://the-collab-lab.codes/assets/img/devto/arch.jpg
---

_Note: This article first appeared [on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-mentor-early-career-developers-heres-what-need-succeed-hedges/)._

Knowing how to code is just one aspect of being a professional web developer. Another super important skill is knowing how to collaborate effectively on a software team. Most coding bootcamps don’t teach this skill or don’t teach it effectively. This leads early-career developers to stumble in interviews and require a lot of ramp up time in their first tech jobs. [The Collab Lab](https://the-collab-lab.codes/) is a program [Stacie Taylor](https://twitter.com/the_real_stacie) and I created to help solve this problem.


## The Collab Lab Turns One

In the year since we launched, The Collab Lab has helped **44 early-career web developers** learn how to work on software teams. We provide **remote, collaborative project practice** for developers who have worked to develop a baseline of technical skills, but who haven’t yet had the experience of working on a technical team.

Our **two dozen volunteer mentors** are all professional web developers and engineering leaders. We structure our projects to be simplified, but otherwise very real-world in how they’re run. Participants employ **pair programming** to complete stories managed on a project board. They present **weekly demos** of their progress and participate in learning modules and **retrospectives.** Participants report feeling **more confident in interviews** and more prepared for their first developer job.

## What helps early-career developers?

Through the course of running [12 projects of 8 weeks each over this last year](https://dev.to/the-collab-lab), we’ve learned a ton about how to make early-career developers successful. It boils down to the following 5 themes:

- Structure
- Process
- Interdependence
- Context
- Encouragement

Sure, call it SPICE if it helps you remember it. 😅

### Structure

Early-career developers benefit from **clear guardrails** and easy-to-consume **written documentation** on processes and requirements.

At The Collab Lab, that takes the form of a [project brief](https://github.com/the-collab-lab/smart-shopping-list/blob/main/PROJECT-BRIEF.md) that acts as a one-stop shop for the information germane to the project. It includes a summary of important links, our expectations of the participants (including pair programming), our weekly project cadence, and even some low-level details such as how we name branches in our code repositories.

Some senior developers might find it overkill, but I’d argue that **even experienced teams benefit from having this information clearly documented.**

### Process

In any organization, but especially in a remote one, written documentation of processes helps developers understand what to expect—and what is expected—day-to-day.

[That project brief I mentioned before](https://github.com/the-collab-lab/smart-shopping-list/blob/main/PROJECT-BRIEF.md) clearly outlines how our developers will know what to work on as well as the steps for determining when a [user story](https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories) is done. For many of our participants, this is their first experience working on a software team. By documenting the code review and approval process, they can refer to the expectations when things get confusing.

### Interdependence

The Collab Lab has been a distributed endeavor from the outset. We use Slack and GitHub to coordinate our projects at a distance. On these remote teams, we encourage interdependence. We emphasize that **this isn’t school.** Our participants are not being judged or graded. **They’re a team** working together to get something done.

Each week, our teams of 4 break into 2 pairs. The expectation is that each pair will spend a significant amount of time each week synchronously **pair programming.** As early-career developers, they’re more likely to succeed at the task at hand if they can create a Venn diagram of knowledge to apply to the problem.

Another practice we emphasize that encourages interdependence is **working in the open.** This transparency is a core value at [Zapier](https://zapier.com/), where I’m an engineering manager. Being “noisy” in Slack **helps everyone feel more connected** and keeps the team up-to-date on both progress and blockers as the weeks progress.

### Context

When we kick off new projects, we ask each participant to watch [a video run-through of a previous team’s working application](https://youtu.be/uWgkwY_VBPo). This is possible because we do the same project each time, but for most organizations the equivalent could take the form of a click-through prototype or even just design mock-ups.

Another way we provide context to our developers is by using the following user story format:

- As a ______
- I want to ______
- So that ______

For example, the following is one of the stories from the smart shopping list project:

- As a **user**
- I want to **add new items to my shopping list**
- So that **I can start recording purchases**

This format is helpful to early-career developers because it’s not just a to-do list of requirements. It provides **a description of the value being provided to the end user,** including the “why” of the feature. This empowers our developers to come up with creative solutions to the problems presented to them.

### Encouragement

When we train our Collab Lab mentors, we literally tell them to **be cheerleaders for their teams.** Their more formal role is a hybrid of senior developer and product owner, but the most important thing they do most weeks is **help the people on their team have confidence** they can do the thing.

Because we work in Slack for the most part, this cheerleading often takes the form of lots of GIFs and emoji. ✨ That might not be a great fit for your organization’s culture (in which case I feel sad for you 😅), but because we work remotely, we find it builds much-needed **emotional connection** among our participants and mentors.

Connection and encouragement—including the praxis of [growth mindset](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2019/07/09/why-a-growth-mindset-is-essential-for-career-success/) by focusing on [formative, not summative feedback](https://sites.tufts.edu/teaching/assessment/assessment-approaches/formative-and-summative-feedback/)—go a long way toward **overcoming imposter syndrome,** that all-too-common feeling that you’re a fraud who’s going to be found out _any minute now._ By **modeling vulnerability and celebrating setbacks,** our mentors create a space where it’s safe to experiment and grow.

> Increasing the diversity of your team by hiring bootcamp grads only works in the long term if you do the hard work of creating an inclusive, supportive working environment.

## Is it worth the effort?

There are myriad benefits to hiring early-career developers. The **enthusiasm** they bring to a team is contagious, and they can serve as motivation to better document requirements, systems, and processes. It’s also a group that tends to include more people from groups underrepresented in tech, so it’s a great way to **increase diversity on your teams.**

But like anything worth doing, you may need to make changes to make the effort successful. Harnessing that enthusiasm takes **planning and organization.** Increasing the diversity of your team by hiring bootcamp grads only works in the long term if you **do the hard work of creating an inclusive, supportive working environment.**

There are no shortcuts in life or tech, but if you **lay the proper groundwork,** you’ll set yourself up to help your early-career developers succeed.

❦

[Andrew Hedges](https://twitter.com/segdeha), Founder of The Collab Lab, is an engineering manager at [Zapier](https://zapier.com/), a fully-remote workflow automation company. He holds a Masters of Education from the University of Maryland College Park in counseling and human development. Andrew lives in beautiful Portland, Oregon.

[Stacie Taylor](https://twitter.com/the_real_stacie), Co-Founder of The Collab Lab, is an engineer at [Zapier](https://zapier.com/). She is a former product manager turned engineer and a fierce advocate for early-career developers. Stacie lives in sunny Sacramento, California.

Follow [The Collab Lab on Twitter](https://twitter.com/_collab_lab).