1. mkdev is not a course

Your studies at mkdev are limited only with the mentor’s knowledge, unlike some programming courses where you get some specific amount of knowledge in allotted time. Which means that when we teach, we teach our students not some particular technology, but everything we know.

Our student’s goal is of utmost importance for us. We customize the plan of studies keeping our students, their knowledge and goals in mind. There’s a wide variety of goals. For example, our students might want to learn programming to move to some other country, be promoted at work, pass a job interview, start an online store. We pay attention to all of that and alter the plan to these needs.

2. Mentor is not a course teacher, he or she is committed to the student’s success

Code review is not the only duty our mentors have. They also teach, control, help with the job search and time management.

We treat our student as our future colleagues, with whom we might someday work together. We want to teach them properly so they wouldn’t fail on our hypothetical future projects. This is why we are proactive even when our students are getting lazy. If the student is slow-witted, we find a way to reach out to him or her, even if for us it means explaining some simplistic stuff.

We can also specify the direction and topics for the studies, telling our students what to learn and in what order. At some point we can say “Stop learning, let’s look for a job for you!” or even
“You don’t need the shit you’re learning, you need the shit I’ve told you, ‘cause I’m smarter than this dumbass from the internets.” It’s important to do all of the above, because if the students could do that themselves, they wouldn’t need us as their mentors.

We establish friendly mentor-student relationship, but keep in touch with the students only when they have subscription. Try to limit your communication with those whose subscription is over. If your student keeps messaging you, let Leonid know and he will professionally talk the student into extending the subscription.

3. Mentor should show how to search for the right answers rather than answer the questions

According to the principle 2, we need to make sure that the student understands what we’re talking about. Thus sometimes just answering the question is not enough. You need to show your student how to find an answer singlehandedly. They say that ‘asking the right question is half the answer’, so you need to teach your student how to properly form such questions and how to search for the answers.

If you’ve done everything okay, your student will be able to find answers to the questions alone, without a mentor. Such independence might help the students a lot at their future work.

4. Mentor doesn’t teach how to code. Mentor teaches how to be a programmer.

An ability to write and read code is only a small part of a programmer’s job. Mentorship goes beyond teaching several technologies. Mentor shows their students everything they need to start programming, earn money and become a successful individual.

Broadly speaking, you should show your students how to be as awesome and successful as you. That includes time and stress management, communication with the clients, the books necessary to read etc.