Mentoring's value increases when done outside your direct org. It becomes a two-way street: you learn about other parts of the business, and you can plant seeds of influence and better engineering practices that can grow and spread organically throughout the company.
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Successful individuals receive endless mentorship requests. Instead of helping everyone or no one, they should focus their limited time on 'multipliers'—people whose position or potential allows them to influence and develop many others. This strategy scales a leader's wisdom and impact.
A senior engineer's greatest impact often comes not from being the deepest technical expert, but from having enough context across multiple domains (marketing, PR, engineering) to act as a translator. They synthesize information and help teams with deep expertise navigate complex, cross-functional decisions.
Goldcast's founders actively connected their marketing leader with an experienced CMO and sponsored the engagement. This demonstrates a powerful, tangible investment in professional development that accelerates a leader's growth in navigating executive and board-level challenges.
While acknowledging the benefit of having mentors, Herb Wagner has found that the process of being a mentor is even more educational. Teaching and guiding others forces a deeper understanding of one's own principles and provides fresh perspectives from the next generation, offering greater personal and professional growth.
Superhuman's CTO credits a non-tech role managing submarine maintenance with teaching him to lead without technical legitimacy. By being forced to put his ego aside and drive change by asking fundamental questions, he learned to influence people far smarter in their domain.
The path to senior engineering levels is tied to the scope of your work's influence. Rather than explicitly seeking promotions, focus on projects with natural potential to grow from solving a team's problem to solving an organization's. The promotions will follow the impact.
Mentoring is not just altruistic; it's a powerful tool for self-improvement. When mentees apply a senior PM's frameworks and encounter challenges, it forces the mentor to refine their models, plug gaps, and confirm which patterns are truly repeatable. It's a feedback loop for your own expertise.
An investment committee's value extends beyond simple gatekeeping. It serves as a vital communication tool between company divisions, a focusing mechanism to prevent chasing distractions, and a mentoring opportunity where junior talent can learn from senior-level analysis and decision-making.
Don't wait for a promotion or new job opening to grow. Proactively identify other teams' pain points and offer your expertise to help solve them. This proactive helpfulness builds relationships, demonstrates your value across the organization, and organically opens doors to new skills and responsibilities.
The young founder hired an experienced executive who became a mentor and effectively his boss. He learned more from observing this leader's actions—how he interacted with people and approached problems—than from direct instruction. This demonstrates the power of learning through osmosis from seasoned operators.
