A design review keeps circling back to the same objections.
- Bring
- The proposal, constraints, rejected options, and unresolved review comments.
- First useful step
- Identify the decision that is still open and what evidence would settle it.
Engineering mentoring · Online, one to one
Engineering mentoring starts with your next decision.
Engineering mentoring gives you an experienced engineer to think through a design decision, promotion question, or difficult team situation with. Bring one problem you are facing at work; we will use it to decide what to work on next.
With Aleksandr Perederei, Principal Engineer and former CTO. Updated .
Which kind of help do you need?
“I want to grow” can mean very different things. Choose the situation closest to yours. The first task is to understand what is getting in the way, before committing to a longer plan.
My manager says I need more scope before Staff promotion.
- Bring
- Your company’s level rubric, the feedback, and one recent project summary.
- First useful step
- Separate missing experience from missing evidence, then prepare specific questions for your manager.
Several teams need to agree, and nobody owns the decision.
- Bring
- Who is affected, what each team needs, and the decision deadline.
- First useful step
- Work out who can decide, which trade-offs need discussion, and how to record the agreement.
I am unsure whether to stay, change teams, or change roles.
- Bring
- What you want to change, your constraints, and options you have already considered.
- First useful step
- Compare the actual work in each option and identify what you still need to learn.
Sometimes the next conversation is with your manager.
If you do not know what Staff means at your company, an external mentor cannot settle that question. Your manager needs to explain the expectations and whether there is an opportunity to take on that work. Otherwise, you can spend months preparing for a role that is not available.
Mentoring can help you prepare for that conversation. Ask: which expectation am I not meeting, what example would demonstrate it, and which project would let me try? Bring the answers back so we can work with your company’s actual criteria.
Build a promotion plan around the evidenceWhen another kind of support fits better
- For learning a language from scratch, start with a course and a small project. You will have more specific questions once you have tried building something.
- For a team’s codebase, deployment process, or business rules, an internal mentor has context an external mentor may never have.
- For promotion approval, staffing, or a change in responsibilities, you need someone inside the company with the authority to act.
You can use mentoring alongside those resources. The important part is knowing which question each person can answer.
Agree on what progress would look like.
Before building a learning plan, write down something you want to do differently at work. “Improve communication” is difficult to evaluate. “Write a proposal that lets the reviewers decide between two migration options” gives us something to examine.
After trying the next step, bring back the result: the review comments, the decision, or the question that is still unresolved. That feedback tells us whether to keep working on the same problem, change approach, or stop because you have what you need.
See a worked example of a mentoring sessionA short brief you can use before a call
- What happened? Describe one recent situation.
- What decision or outcome do you need, and by when?
- What have you tried, and what feedback did you get?
- What can you share: a summary, a draft, or a simplified diagram?
- What would make the conversation useful to you?
A few sentences are enough. Remove confidential details and share only material your employer permits you to disclose.
The engineering perspective behind the sessions
My background includes Principal Engineer work at Delivery Hero, Staff Engineer work at Tesla, and Engineering Manager and CTO roles. That experience shapes the questions I bring to a review: who needs to make the decision, what will be harder to operate, and can the team deliver it?
You can read that reasoning before booking. In Microservices Should Reduce Coordination, I discuss judging service boundaries by whether a team can ship independently. In Go Architecture: Start With Boundaries, I describe how an elaborate design got in the way of delivery. Both articles were adapted from my webinars.
Read my experience and backgroundQuestions before you start
What is engineering mentoring?
Engineering mentoring is a working conversation with an experienced engineer about your decisions and development. It can include reviewing a design, examining promotion feedback, or preparing a difficult technical discussion. The useful output is a next action you can try at work and evaluate afterward.
Should I find a mentor inside my company or outside it?
Start internally when you need company context: how a team operates, who owns a decision, or what a promotion committee expects. An external mentor can offer another technical perspective and help you prepare questions or review work you are permitted to share. You may benefit from both.
Do I need to know whether I want a Staff or management role?
No. Bring examples of work you want more of and work you want less of. We can compare the responsibilities behind each path, then identify an assignment or conversation that helps you test your preference before committing to a title.
Can engineering mentoring guarantee a promotion?
No. A mentor can help you assess your work, choose projects, and explain your contribution. Your company decides the promotion criteria, available scope, timing, and outcome. Confirm those constraints with your manager before building a plan around them.
Prefer to start on your own? Browse the engineering mentoring resources or use the mentor evaluation checklist.
Bring the question you keep getting stuck on.
A design review, a piece of feedback, or a career decision is enough to start the conversation.