Why Teach

Why Teach

I've been asked this question a lot over the years, but never really dug into why.

Whenever I've been asked about it I've just shrugged and confirmed that I just like it. And that answer works for most conversations, but really - why do I like it?

Lessons learned from teaching

• teaching/mentoring others is hard because everyone is different - your role as a mentor is to quickly figure out the person and their learning style, and adjust your delivery
• through teaching you learn more - the more people you teach the more you have access to different angles of looking at a problem and if you pay attention you'll learn something from that
• teaching is humbling - you might not know the answer so it makes you realise how much more there is to learn
• mentoring / teaching is rewarding - you get to see aspiring developers grow to junior developers in real time
• teaching improves your memory of core basics, core basics improve your overall systems knowledge, and improved systems knowledge helps you with architecting systems and troubleshooting
• your communication improves through teaching because of repetition and explaining the same concepts in different ways

My Teaching Timeline

How long have I mentored or taught or advised on various topics?

During university I had chance to do a work placement in corporate sales. Up to then, my big dream was to be a CEO and move to Japan. My role was to sell HR and legal insurance so a big part of the pitch was fact finding about the business and seeing if there could areas where my coverage packages could help.

I very rarely oversold the package and was still the best in my hiring group. I cared about businesses and really wanted to learn about every single one and see where the product could actually help. A great job in hindsight for a business management student with a love of strategy.

That placement changed me for the better. I realised soon after that I wanted to make a difference so I continued advising entrepreneurs on marketing strategy during my last year of uni. I did it pro-bono, because I cared about exposure and the experience.

Some of these relationships turned out great and some didn't, but it was a great use of time.

I stopped doing all this pro-bono consulting once I graduated from uni and got into my first job, as mixed product/project manager at a small digital agency.

I managed the agencies retainer client so maintaining the client relationships was key. I achieved this by learning about their business, learning about their problem, and then figuring out what data I can find to plan out the solutions. It's unusual for a project manager to do this, which is why I talk about it as a mixed product/project role.

I was mentoring the clients on tech, strategy, and marketing.

I got back to my own strategy consulting a few years later whilst I was in my last season as a product manager. I started working with an incredible group of engineers developing aquaponics tech and sensors.

I couldn't code then, but knew enough about tech systems to know where to start. I was advising them on marketing, funding, strategy, whilst wanting to implement AI into the system. I wish I knew then how difficult a task that would be, but it got me to work with the Raspberry Pi for the first time.

My consulting was doing great: the group got selected as a contender for the Pitch@Palace event ran by a member of the Royal Family and I got to pitch the project to a room of investors and journalists.

But whilst I was mentoring the engineers on marketing they would teach me how to solder, how to code, how sensors worked and soon after that project reached it's completion I started thinking that I could actually program for a living.

I joined a coding bootcamp shortly after. I enjoyed the bootcamp environment so much that I jumped at the opportunity to teach a beginners class. I also applied for the instructor role, but wasn't as successful.

After graduating the bootcamp I was determined to continue with the tech mentoring so when the opportunity to start a coding bootcamp for refugees came up I was the first to sign up. I was a co-organiser of that bootcamp for a year and oversaw recruitment, teaching, and wellbeing for the students in collaboration with a team of like-minded mentors.

Some of the social problems facing refugees were getting to me and at that time I started to attend other mentoring groups that were casual and less frequent.

I kept doing this free tech mentoring for two years and in the process I must've worked with 100+ people looking to learn how to code.

Towards the end of that period I also got approached by a local university to help as a teaching instructor on their upcoming bootcamp.

This lead to me becoming and instructor on a future cohort.

Conclusion

I like teaching / mentoring for selfish reasons: it makes me a better developer and it also allows me to help aspiring developers join the industry.