Regarding the mentorship, note there is a huge difference between asking “is there mentorship” and hearing “sure! mentorship is one of our core values!” to asking specifically “will I have 1 hour per week with a senior dev where I can ask questions that will help me improve?”
There are other questions you could ask too, but more generally this is a very common problem that developers (including myself in the past) fall into, which is why I recommend these questions.
Many hiring managers will, eh, twist the truth about the subjective meaning of “a lot”, but way fewer will blatantly lie to something completely objective and factual such as wether they do one-on-ones (and in what frequency and so on).
Adding: If they do blatantly lie about that, I’d aim to open a conversation about it within the first week and probably quit before the second week is over. Better not stay in such a manipulative relationship.
(We may discuss the specifics which I totally oversimplified here, but you get my direction in general. Too many devs are stuck in places like that, and if my post helps just one of them, then this was all worth it)
Thanks for the detailed answers. I would be interested in hearing more about “how to get good mentorship given a specific job” in case you can redirect me to a particular article or similar.
Thanks!
Regarding the mentorship, note there is a huge difference between asking “is there mentorship” and hearing “sure! mentorship is one of our core values!” to asking specifically “will I have 1 hour per week with a senior dev where I can ask questions that will help me improve?”
There are other questions you could ask too, but more generally this is a very common problem that developers (including myself in the past) fall into, which is why I recommend these questions.
Many hiring managers will, eh, twist the truth about the subjective meaning of “a lot”, but way fewer will blatantly lie to something completely objective and factual such as wether they do one-on-ones (and in what frequency and so on).
Adding: If they do blatantly lie about that, I’d aim to open a conversation about it within the first week and probably quit before the second week is over. Better not stay in such a manipulative relationship.
(We may discuss the specifics which I totally oversimplified here, but you get my direction in general. Too many devs are stuck in places like that, and if my post helps just one of them, then this was all worth it)
I also have things to say about “how to get good mentorship given a specific job”, but decided that would be out-of-scope for this post.
Thanks for the detailed answers. I would be interested in hearing more about “how to get good mentorship given a specific job” in case you can redirect me to a particular article or similar.
May I user test my mentorship article with you once I have a reasonable draft? :)
(If you’re in that situation right now and prefer not waiting, consider contacting me directly. Maybe we’ll write it together!)
Sure, I sent you an email