My experience as a technical mentor at CultureAmp

In Nov. 2022, CultureAmp started its Junior Engineering program again, it's called CampUs. This time, CultureAmp partnered with a program called WithYouWithMe to bring five Junior Engineers to work at CultureAmp. Throughout their time at CultureAmp, there will be a series of learning curricula, and one of those was learning about Frontend development and specifically ReactJS. I've been fortunate to be contributed as a technical mentor for these talented individuals. In this short post, I'll share a bit of my experience becoming a technical mentor at CultureAmp

Over the past 11 weeks, I have been part of a ReactJS study group with several engineers at CultureAmp. This experience has been an incredible opportunity for me to learn more about ReactJS development while also giving back as a mentor. As someone who has been focusing on upskilling myself in frontend engineering for the past two years, this group has provided me with a unique opportunity to learn, grow, and develop my skills further.

Throughout the study group, we covered a range of topics that included some patterns in developing React and Web components, react-query, Storybook, and testing components. I found the variety of topics to be beneficial as they allowed me to expand my knowledge and gain deeper insights into the intricacies of ReactJS development.

Our main project during the study group was to rewrite the existing Facewall App, originally written in Elm, as a React application. The Facewall App is an important web application at CultureAmp, displaying camper information from Slack across multiple screens in our offices. Rather than simply reading through the existing Elm codebase, we took the opportunity to approach this project from a product development perspective. We started by breaking down the Figma design into React components and created tasks on Trello. Each week, we paired up and worked collaboratively on assigned tasks.

As a mentor, I was thrilled to share my knowledge and help other campers learn more about ReactJS development. My experience as a technical mentor in the study group has been fantastic. Not only did it help me gain a better understanding of the topics that I was teaching, but it also improved my communication skills significantly. I found that it was essential to break down complex concepts into simpler ones to ensure that everyone in the group could understand the material.

The experience also taught me how to prepare better presentation materials and adopt a better approach to teaching others with different levels of understanding of the concept. For instance, I found that using real examples from the code from a real CultureAmp codebase helped the campers better understand the material. Additionally, I realized the importance of having open communication channels with the audience in the study group, allowing them to ask questions and clarify any doubts that they had.

In conclusion, participating in the ReactJS development study group has been an enriching experience that allowed me to learn from others and share my knowledge while strengthening my understanding of frontend engineering. I am grateful for this opportunity and look forward to taking part in similar initiatives in the future. Overall, it has been a fantastic experience that has allowed me to grow both personally and professionally. I highly recommend others to participate in similar initiatives regardless of your level of expertise as it provides a unique opportunity to learn from others and expand one's knowledge and skills.

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