Today, I’ve had no meetings with management (a rarity). But I’ve been away from my desk virtually the entire day, running from cube to cube helping developers do their work.The chance to mentor other developers is one of my favorite things about being a consultant. Mentoring really goes hand-in-hand with being a consultant, especially a senior consultant. Consultants are often looked on to play this role (the mentor/coach) even if it’s not explicitly asked of them. Be sure to take every opportunity to help others when you can. Be proactive; offer your help wherever you can be useful. Helping other developers helps you as well.

Everyone you mentor, no matter what their position or level of seniority, knows something that you don’t know. You might find that a junior developer, who’s green on the basics, is nevertheless using a tool that you’ve never heard of, or working more efficiently with a tool that you use frequently. Talking through the basics can help you understand what you already know even better than before. Or, it may show you that you don’t know everything that you think you know. Either way, you win. Helping a senior developer with more complicated work is often an opportunity to learn new things. In all cases, fixing bugs and working out problems with others makes you a stronger developer. Development is a social activity, after all. Every new person you work with gives you more insight on how the department works as a whole. The more contacts you make at an organization, the more resources you’ll have to draw on to solve the next problem. It’s the variety of experiences; different people, different projects, and different problems, that make a consultant wiser and more valuable to clients.

Mentoring gives you more visibility at the client, and not just with the developers. If you’re valuable to the developers, word of that will inevitably bubble up to management, and further cement your reputation as a valuable asset. Over time, you’ll be recognized as “the goto guy” when difficult problems are encountered. Not to mention, this can only help you at client evaluation time.

In my own case, mentoring provides job satisfaction. At the end of the day, it’s good to know that you were able to help someone solve a problem. The phrase “no man is an island” was never more true than when applied to software development. Everything you do affects the people you work with, and what they do affects you. You were undoubtedly helped by someone at some point. It’s time to give back.

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