Building good developers
summary
Mentoring and teaching produce measurable gains: the protégé effect from a Stanford study shows learners who teach retain more, and internal practice forces explanation of the why, exposing gaps in knowledge. Practical tooling examples include having to relearn Git, a mentee-sourced Python library that becomes daily tooling, and an MVP dashboard solved with GitHub Actions rather than an ivory‑tower AWS design. Programs report 600% ROI and about 72% retention for mentees (69% for mentors), plus better communication, habits, and empathy.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Start
- 0:40Introduction to Kate, Marc, and live doodling
- 1:55What She Codes does and why community matters
- 2:25Teaching Python and React at a Laravel conference
- 3:15The Stanford protégé effect study
- 5:00Why teaching helps you learn and retain more
- 5:25Audience poll on mentoring and imposter syndrome
- 6:00Mentoring as a selfish and selfless act
- 7:05You do not need to be an expert to teach
- 8:30Deepening fundamentals by explaining the “why”
- 10:00Reinforcing best practices through modelling behaviour
- 12:30Learning new tools and ideas from students
- 13:30Marc’s story on learning from a mentee
- 15:15Soft skills and why developers are paid to think
- 16:30Breaking down complex problems and rubber ducking
- 18:10Communication, empathy, and diverse perspectives
- 19:40A powerful story about being a minority
- 22:00Closing reflections and call to mentor others
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