Can mentoring help your career? GHC16

From Imposter to Hero

Peggy Lee (creator of Made by girls), Sargun Kaur (software engineer at Google), Carmen Badea (staff software engineer at Intel), Dioslein Gonazalez (VR engineer at Unity) and Iris Cheung (software engineer at Apple) brought a diverse set of experiences to this panel on encouraging women to be mentors. With different cultural backgrounds and mentoring experience (group vs 1:1), they brought a unique perspective to the challenges and joys of mentorship. 

The panel members

My key take-aways from the panel -

1. People who mentor are happier and more likely to stay at their place of work. It brings meaning to their life.
2. It is all about a relationship based on trust and honesty both with respect to how you can help and how much time you can put in.
3. Understand the difference between a sponsor and a mentor and set appropriate expectations with the mentee.
4. It's easy to project yourself on the mentee and force your opinion but figure out what they need from you. Maybe they just need someone to listen to them and not advice necessarily.
5. When imposter-syndrome kicks in, use data and and your anger to use. Put your engineering mindset to use and use the data i.e. your achievements for a counter-argument. Instead of being upset and giving up, turn that anger into something else. It is 2016 after all - we can't still be doubting our capabilities as women.
6. Call out the naysayers. Feel sorry for them (not necessarily aloud) that they are losing on valuable opportunity to hear your views just because they are being narrow-minded.
7. At first, mentoring is a personal victory at overcoming the imposter syndrome. It does translate into recognition and growth at work.
8. The closer you are to being your authentic self at work, the happier you will be. Find a place that appreciates you for yourself. 

Carmen Badea

I spoke to Carmen Badea from Intel after the panel and she spoke about how her mentoring opportunities both internal and external all came through Intel. It was great speaking to this awesome engineer from Intel SSG and glad to be part of the supportive company Intel is.