How to grow (and get promoted) through mentorship

Frances Coronel is an engineering manager, speaker, and mentor at Formation. Since 2015, she’s been building user-focused solutions on core feature and growth teams, with deep expertise in React and TypeScript. She currently works on the Lists team at Slack, helping teams manage projects and tasks without ever leaving their work OS.

Frances is passionate about mentoring, teaching, and giving back. A proud Peruvian-American, she’s committed to championing diversity and empowering the next generation of engineers — especially those from underrepresented communities in tech.

Early in your engineering career, finding a mentor is one of the best things you can do to level up fast. If you're mid-level or senior, mentoring others might be the thing that unlocks your next promo. And if you're an engineering manager? Mentorship is your job.

After 8+ years in tech — from intern to senior engineer to engineering manager —I’ve seen how mentorship is the key to long-term growth, impact, and promotion. Here’s how it shows up at every stage.

What is mentorship, really?

At its core, mentorship is a relationship where someone further along in their career invests their insight, experience, and energy to help you grow — whether that’s sharpening your coding skills, navigating organizational politics, or stepping into leadership. 

Mentorship is a two-way street: mentors gain fresh perspectives from newer folks, while mentees receive real-world guidance they won’t find in any tutorial. When done right, mentorship helps you skip unnecessary speed bumps and level up faster than you could on your own.

With that in mind, let’s dig into how mentorship shows up at every stage of your engineering journey. 

As a junior engineer or intern: Find your mentors

As a junior engineer, you’re not expected to know everything — but you are expected to learn quickly. The fastest way to do that is to seek out people a few steps ahead of you and learn from them.

Whether shadowing a more senior engineer, asking questions in code reviews, or setting up recurring 1:1s, finding mentors is crucial to quick growth. You’ll upskill faster, build confidence, and get unblocked when you hit those inevitable “what the heck am I doing?” moments. Something that might take you an hour to debug could take a mentor just five minutes to explain. As a junior engineer, your job is to seek out as many learning opportunities from as many engineers as possible — that’s how you grow faster.

When starting my career, I made it a point to connect with engineers who intimidated me in the best way — folks who had built features that inspired me or had the kind of code review game I aspired to.

How do you find a mentor?

• Look inside your company. Identify engineers whose work you admire. Maybe they shipped a feature that wowed you or consistently gave top-notch feedback in code reviews. Don’t be afraid to DM them on Slack or catch them after a team meeting to see if they’d be open to a coffee chat.
• Reach beyond your org. Mentors outside your company can give you fresh perspectives. Think local meetups, conferences, LinkedIn, or like-minded communities like Formation. Often, just sending a polite message about what you admire and what you hope to learn is enough to start a conversation. And always offer a token of gratitude (e.g., coffee, snack, stickers, etc) if you can!
• Make the ask. People can’t read your mind, so don’t wait to be invited to the table. Send a short, friendly note expressing why you value their insight and what you’re hoping to learn.

Example: Ada Developer Academy

If someone more junior than me reaches out, I’m usually more than happy to set up an initial conversation. I’ll ask about their goals, their current challenges, and any specific skills they want to build. Sometimes we click and schedule recurring chats; other times, I’ll point them toward someone better suited to their interests. Either way, the key is being open and responsive. 

Not long ago, I spoke to a cohort of Ada Developer Academy students — a nonprofit program for women and gender-expansive folks pivoting into software engineering. After my talk, one of the interns followed up with this message:

“Good afternoon, Frances! Thanks so much for the advice you gave us this morning. I learned a lot! I would love to connect over a coffee huddle one day in the upcoming weeks if you're available. Let me know — thank you!”

Even though it didn’t turn into a long-term mentorship, it opened the door for her to dive deeper into the field with fresh resources and personalized guidance. Sometimes all it takes is that initial conversation to spark your next big opportunity.

✅ DO reach out to engineers you admire.

❌ DON’T wait for someone to mentor you — mentorship is a two-way street, and it’s okay to ask.

As a senior or staff engineer: Look up and pay it forward

Mentorship doesn’t stop once you get to a certain level. If anything, the stakes just get higher. As you level up, you’ll need to actively surround yourself with people at or above the level you aim for.

At Slack, I have seen how Staff Engineers aiming for Senior Staff will move faster with the guidance of a Principal Engineer who can challenge their thinking and help them spot growth opportunities. 

On the flip side, you're now expected to mentor others. At Slack, you can’t get promoted to Senior Engineer unless you’ve shown evidence of mentoring others through intern coaching, peer support, or cross-team knowledge sharing.

As a senior engineer, I mentored an intern and helped them grow in areas they didn’t initially feel confident in (like writing). Because I wanted to challenge them, I supported them in publishing a blog post on the Slack Engineering blog, turning a growth edge into a career milestone.

I also remember my experience as a senior engineer mentoring an Engineer Level 2 who had been working toward a promotion for a while — they’d even tried once before and didn’t quite make it. From our earliest projects working together, it was clear their technical abilities were solid, but they needed to level up their cross-functional collaboration and communication in larger meetings. Because I believed they had what it took, I went the extra mile to help them refine these softer skills.

Through regular feedback loops, proactive goal-setting, and a focus on stepping up in cross-team conversations, they soon became more visible and effective in stakeholder discussions. In the last promo cycle, their improved collaboration and communication made a real impression on leadership, resulting in a well-deserved promotion. It was a testament to how targeted mentorship can genuinely accelerate someone’s career growth.

✅ DO invest in mentoring interns, early-career folks, or peers aiming for their next level.

❌ DON’T fall into the "heads-down work only" trap — mentoring is impact.

As an engineering manager: Mentorship is the role

When you step into management, mentorship goes from a growth strategy to your day-to-day. You're constantly coaching, guiding, unblocking, and stretching your reports.

When deciding whether to continue on the IC (Individual Contributor) path as a Staff Engineer or pivot into an EM (Engineering Manager) role, it often comes down to what truly energizes you. If you geek out over tackling complex technical challenges and honing deep expertise, then staying on the IC track might be your sweet spot. On the flip side, if you’re all about motivating teams, unblocking people, and shaping culture, then management may be your calling.

When I was torn between these paths, talking with five engineering managers (who had transitioned from senior or staff roles) and two staff engineers (who decided management wasn't for them) illuminated the trade-offs in a way that hours of solo reflection simply couldn’t. Real-world insights from people who’d walked both paths made a big impact!

Since becoming an EM for the Lists team at Slack, I’ve had the opportunity to mentor engineers through new responsibilities, promo readiness, and cross-functional impact. I also hold regular 1:1s with other managers who transitioned from senior ICs to EMs to share resources and grow together.

Mentorship as a manager is about both support and challenge. You’re not just a cheerleader — you’re a coach helping your team hit their potential.

✅ DO treat every 1:1 as a chance to grow someone’s confidence and capability.

❌ DON’T assume getting mentored ends when you start managing—connecting with others and finding role models from whom you can seek advice becomes even more critical.

Practicing mentorship outside the workplace

Mentorship is also a skill you can intentionally build over time — and there are so many ways to practice it beyond your 9–5.

Since 2016, I’ve been paid to mentor engineers 1:1 and have logged over 225 hours of mentorship with folks navigating everything from promo packets, salary negotiation, resume reviews, and system design prep.

I’ve also been a mentor with Formation since March 2023. I’ve hosted 128 sessions through Formation focused on behavioral interviews, resume reviews, and system design. I helped place 56 Fellows at top companies like Netflix, Gusto, Microsoft, Square, and Cash App while maintaining a rating of 4.9/5.

And the impact? It’s deeply personal.

💬 “The behavioral session we had the day before my onsite was the prep I needed for the hiring manager interview that I had!” — a mentee who landed an offer from DoorDash.

💬 “The conversation with the hiring manager went really well, and your suggestions and the tip to use ChatGPT were really helpful!” — another mentee after a successful onsite with the Wikimedia Foundation

💬 “Frances is very impressive. She’s so thorough and an expert in the field. I’m thrilled I got the chance to review my resume seeds with her — I received such tailored feedback.” — Current Formation Fellow

Little notes like these always keep me motivated. Mentoring externally allows you to refine your listening, ask better questions, and develop your coaching muscle—all things that make you a better engineer and teammate. 

I know a VP of Engineering at Notion who used to regularly mentor engineers through Plato, a platform that connected mentors and mentees in the tech industry. So whether you're an IC or an EM, mentorship is a craft you can practice. And the more you do it, the more natural and impactful it becomes.

Final thoughts: Mentorship is a superpower

The best engineers I know prioritize mentorship. They seek it out, offer it generously, and build teams where it’s the norm.

Mentorship through the community helped me navigate layoffs, promotions, burnout, and bold career pivots. It's been one of my career's most powerful forces—and the most fulfilling.

You don’t need to have all the answers. You just need to be willing to ask good questions, share what you’ve learned, and create space for others to grow.

Looking for mentorship to grow in your tech career?

The Formation Fellowship gives mid-level and senior engineers access to experienced mentors, technical coaches, mock interviews, and more. Apply here to get the support you need to thrive.