The hardest task we have to deal with is working on ourselves. We can understand it in many ways: building new, better habits, getting rid of behaviors that do not quite suit us, or gaining new skills. Tasks like these are very often connected with change, usually quite drastic change. The words of Heraclitus of Ephesus, that the only constant thing in life is change, probably describe best the fact that our growth will not happen by itself.

Unfortunately, there is something in our psyche that makes the unknown frightening. Change very often requires stepping outside our own comfort zone. This means we have to partially give up our sense of safety. Unfortunately - change is necessary. Staying in one place for too long usually condemns us to failure. It is worth pointing out that, according to research, change, even positive change, causes psychological discomfort.

Down the Rabbit Hole

The words above can be applied to many activities in our lives. I would like us to focus mainly on developing programming skills. For many people, the IT industry is a kind of enchanted land: programmers, like wizards, create some incomprehensible spells, earn quite well while doing it, and still enjoy the work. No wonder, then, that with the worn-out slogan that Poland lacks more than 50 thousand IT specialists, and the European Union more than 600 thousand, people want to change careers. And let us be honest: there is nothing wrong with that.

It is worth, however, taking some of the magic out of that picture. Programmers are people who work creatively and logically, who are curious about the world and enjoy solving problems. Programming is therefore a field that requires the ability to connect facts into a logical and coherent whole, translate conclusions into a language understandable to a machine, gather requirements, and be willing to learn about many different industries. At the same time, it is a very mathematical field. Taking all of this into account, entering IT as a programmer or tester often means changing the way you think: from one where you were forbidden to think in your own way (unfortunately, I mean the school system) to one where you have to create a solution from the materials and knowledge available. Of course, by materials I mean programming languages and the tools created with them.

And this is not an easy task. Seriously.

Practice and Theory

We may think that, so far, there is not much difference between retraining for IT and retraining for other sectors of the economy. It is enough to learn a selected language and start working. There is, however, a subtle difference here. Knowledge that is not backed by practice is simply not useful. We can compare it to going through an entire English textbook without saying a single word in that language along the way. We probably will not be able to communicate - we need to train first.

Having knowledge is, of course, important, but the emphasis on theoretical concepts should be appropriately smaller than the emphasis on practice. Appropriately, meaning how much? In my opinion, even 80% of the time you spend learning programming should be practice. Practice means writing code, applications, websites... You can find ideas on your own by trying to build software around your hobby (for example, creating a tool for managing your collections) or by recreating existing projects.

At this point, to be fair, we need to add that this is not obvious either. How, after all, do we choose a technology, a language, or even tools / libraries / frameworks? We have to browse through hundreds of publications and reports and make some kind of choice. The question is whether it will be the right one.

Perhaps we will come across a series of articles about an interesting technology that may in fact be great, but has marginal importance on the job market. This can de facto make you spend time on something that will not bring you closer to your goal in the way you expected.

Mentor

For centuries, there has been a pattern in which a person aspiring to reach a certain position uses the support of someone more experienced. Schools work on a similar principle. Nobody leaves students entirely on their own - there is a teacher with them. Educational institutions operated in this mode for whole centuries. The idea is sound and it works, or at least it used to work. It would still work today if not for overzealous attempts to put knowledge into rigid order and train creativity out of people. Today's schools rush through the material, giving no chance to explore a topic more deeply and study it independently. In this way, the element of independent thinking is excluded.

So who is a mentor? They are certainly not a teacher in the school sense. They are not exactly a trainer either. A mentor is rather a person who supports, supervises, and sets directions for growth. They take responsibility for guiding the development of their mentees. The whole weight of the work is on the side of the learner, but honestly - this is exactly how it looks in more traditional education systems as well. The difference is that a mentor is someone more than a teacher. A good mentor will not tell you how to solve a given problem. They will rather focus on analyzing it so that you can arrive at the solution on your own. The key is the questions being asked. The key is conversation. The key is searching.

Guarantee

Nobody can give anyone a guarantee that they will teach someone a given body of material within a specific time. One can guarantee that, within a given time, a certain scope of knowledge will be passed on - nothing beyond that. Giving such a guarantee is simply a fraud. Nobody can guarantee that if someone spends, for example, 40 hours a week exploring a given topic, they will catch up with people at a higher level of advancement. Such guarantees are pure estimates, based on average results of some group, but we have to take into account that everyone has their own pace and needs, respectively, more or less time to master a given aspect.

A mentor cannot give that guarantee either. If they do, they are lying. What is more, most mentors will give up working with people who show no initiative. This comes from the fact that progress of mentees is also a benefit for the person mentoring them, and also from the fact that mentors respect their time - time they could devote to someone more ambitious.

I realize this sounds cruel, but sometimes a mentor estimates who has a better chance - and often people who work hard have a better chance than people who are simply talented. A good mentor will tell you the truth. The best one will do it bluntly, but gently.

Summary

Mentoring is for people who want to get involved and achieve visible results. Because a mentor has more experience, a better understanding of the industry, and contacts in the community, they can maximize the effectiveness of their mentee's work. In my opinion, there is no better form of learning, especially in the IT industry, but we have to say honestly that not everyone has enough self-discipline to study materials independently - even under the eye of a more experienced programmer.