I’m a big proponent of having some formalized process and mentoring at companies, and believe that the benefits of having junior engineers on a team are not exclusive to new engineers. I’m interested in hearing about other new engineers’ onboarding experiences have gone. I’ve created a survey for new engineers who have graduated from a Coding Bootcamp, University, or self-taught, who are now working or interviewing in tech. Mercedes Coyle
RealGravity Software Engineer & Hackbright Graduate
Mercedes is a software engineer at RealGravity, working with data processing, storage, and analytics. She is a Hackbright Academy Fall 2012 alumna and mentor for Hackbright students. Before becoming a software engineer, she worked in the photographic industry as a different type of developer.

By Mercedes Coyle (Hackbright Academy – fall 2012 class)

Since graduating from Hackbright Academy, I’ve been involved in a lot of discussion around mentoring and onboarding new engineers.

I’m a big proponent of having some formalized process and mentoring at companies, and believe that the benefits of having junior engineers on a team are not exclusive to new engineers. I’ve had a pretty awesome onboarding and mentoring experience at Real Gravity, which my work mentor and I presented about at DevopsDays SV 2013. I also believe in helping out others, so I’ve been mentoring and advising pretty much anyone who asks me for help. However, I only have my own experience to draw from.

I’m interested in hearing about other new engineers’ onboarding experiences have gone. I’ve created a survey for new engineers who have graduated from a Coding Bootcamp, University, or self-taught, who are now working or interviewing in tech.

If you fall into that category, please fill out my survey! The survey is anonymous, and asks questions about interviewing processes, mentoring, and preparedness for getting started in technical work.

Once I’ve spent some time analyzing the data, I’ll do a follow up post explaining what I’ve learned from the responses, and how we can use it to help new engineers. I may also create a survey for specific company mentoring and onboarding practices in the interest of learning how to onboard new engineers.

Thanks in advance for contributing your experience!

This post was originally posted at Mercedes's blog.