 So first up hi everybody for those that don't know me my name is Mike McGrath and I had I joined fedora and I think it was around 2005 I was working for a company. I was working for orbits.com the travel company and so I Think even before that I had been at a study abroad company Which means that we we would send American students to other countries to hang out with other American students I think that was the mission of the of the company but then I I really got serious when I was at at Orbit's and I started volunteering in Fedora infrastructure at the time There were no there were not that many people that were paid full-time to work in Fedora And so I have many many stories from from the early days, but I'll share a quick one which was my hiring and so Sometime around Fedora core three or four The road the Fedora release landed on the same day That the quarterly or that the red-half quarterly financials were due and and so We back then for the young ins out there We we got slash dotted. That was the thing. I don't think people say that anymore but the systems were overwhelmed people couldn't actually download the Couldn't get to the website, but also internally because the Fedora stuff was not completely separated from the internal IT stuff the People could not get their financials The finance team couldn't and so basically the CFO kind of said this can never happen again And at the time Max be back was the the federal product or not. He was the Fedora project lead and And they went to him and said hey, we got to work on this and he said we got to invite Mike McGrath that at the time I was volunteering as the Fedora infrastructure lead most of The team at that point was actually volunteers a lot of the Internal people that a lot of the Red Headers are working on Fedora either got moved on to other things or We're in specific situations like like a release engineer kind of thing and So max I'd invite Mike McGrath the CFOs Assistant could not find my name in the directory and that's because I did not work at Red Head. I was a volunteer and She said you want us to invite a volunteer To talk about how we're gonna close financial You know our quarterly company financials and on infrastructure Needless to say I was not invited But that did the outcome of that meeting was to hire somebody full-time to do this and then they hired me And so I started formally in 2007 I did that for several more years and the team grew and I I'd still look very fondly back at my time on Fedora But also around after that I switched to to I think it was called project the Libra was the first one on it And that basically a founding member of OpenShift And so I went and was the our lead architect for OpenShift and the OpenShift online operations manager And then right around the time OpenShift v3 hit I went back to Linux engineering As an architect and manager and did a few things in now Slowly working my way up through the ranks, I guess I'm the vice president of Linux engineering and so in my current role I oversee all of our Linux Distribution so that includes Fedora it includes rel it includes our Centos's Coro s The silver blue stuff is all kind of you know happening over on the desktop team and in other places and All that stuff is in my org, but I also have a few other things like We've got satellite identity management quite a few things are happening in the Linux space. So it's a great team very Very excited to to work on that team and lots of stories. So if you ever catch me at a dinner, feel free to ask I've got plenty plenty to share So next I just kind of want to talk about just my this is my take on how Mentor shows I think that today you'll probably hear lots of different opinions on on this and experiences And when I look at what a mentor is to me the mentor is always an advisor and a coach Who shares their experiences with someone who is less experienced? It would be very strange for me to be mentored by someone Like and you know someone more junior than me and associate to software engineer for example, maybe it happens but that is not typically how I Think of mentorship and in my time I Working at Red Hat I have been both mentored several times and I have mentored several times In just about every type of scenario that you can imagine And so I'm going to cover kind of all of those today and what my experiences were and hoping to kind of share just some Actual facts that I went out and got about mentorship to convince those of you that have not had a mentor before to to get one So Mentorship is common a lot of people have mentors There are people that I know that have multiple mentors right now And some and many are mentoring multiple people I'm personally mentoring a few people right now And so it's always good to make time as a mentor. I make sure I have enough time for them I can't just take on everybody all the time and so I have to turn some away But now I'm mentoring a few people and those relationships are great So of the Fortune 500 companies 71% of them have actual mentorship programs and so at your company You may want to just check and see if they have a mentorship program. They tended me more limited Time-set kind of Programs so you may just be mentored or mentor someone for six months those have their benefits although some people as we'll see have had mentorship for years or even throughout their lifetime and We'll talk about that as well Fedora's mentorship program as I recall was built to read the you know when I first started getting involved This was built around the account system people would specifically sponsor others and certain while I have not attempted to package anything in Fedora recently the package the package sponsorship setup was a perfect example of technical Mentorship to help show people around Fedora Let them know what's important and how to to work on Packages and all that that was required that is a perfect example of mentorship with a very clear goal in mind for both the mentor and the mentee 97% of people that That have worked with a mentor say they are valuable and so you know What was the last time that you found 97% of people agreed on anything at all? I think it's a very strong argument that that mentorship works and So for those of you there in a series say, oh, I can't really get anything out of it I'm gonna speak to that a little bit, but if you don't think mentorships for you. I will say that is probably Something you need to work through and not something about mentorship itself and of course another big one is men mentees those who have been mentored are Promoted five times more often than those without mentors And so if you're if you're in a situation right now where you're very career-minded and you're looking for growth Get a mentor someone that is more senior than you and that can help you Either you know figure out what's what's not working right now or help you figure out some goals and things To line that up Wanting to be promoted for example trying to get to that next level that is a perfect thing to discuss with your mentor And so just keeping in mind when you And we'll talk a little bit more about this too, but there's lots of different reasons to get into mentorship And it's always important to kind of think about what your reasons are So I've mentioned this earlier. I've been involved in many different types of mentorship in my career The first one I talked about was packaging mentorship. I believe my first Packaging sponsor was Ignacio Many many minutes would have been what 15 years ago something like that It was actually just getting packages contributed and so I had That was kind of my first foray into Fedora was at the packaging level But I also quickly got involved with Fedora infrastructure and that was really where I found my home In the Fedora project. I had a few mentors in the early days. Elliott Lee was one soap with Can go back that farther remember that The late Seth Vidal was was hugely influential to my time in in both Fedora, but also how to get involved with Open source in general I had not really contributed to too many Open source projects at the time the only one that I could even say I was even tiny been involved with was myth TV at the time And I had no code contributions. I think I just used it and occasionally You know participated on the mailing list and so having Seth kind of walked me around And introduced me to open source in general was huge and of course Max Spivak who became my manager at Red Hat when I first started here was also big and just kind of helping me through and learn the ropes When I was working in Red Hat like once I actually formally got started at Red Hat, you know, I met several people and that was great But also around the time that OpenShift was was happening That was such a huge turning point in my life and in my career and so One of the things that had happened was basically I had gone back to college around that time to get a Master's degree in engineering management. So I guess for those of you that are interested I highly recommend the engineering management degree. I actually did not I'm not particularly academic I did I don't think I benefited a ton from my bachelor's degree In computer science, right? Technications management actually just because I was such a tinkerer so much that stuff just wasn't new to me But engineering management was actually a great way for me to kind of learn a few more things Didn't so much have a mentor there As learned about leadership and management and that was kind of where I learned a lot of the mechanics of how I would become a mentor later And shortly after inventing OpenShift that became a huge big thing at least at red hat I was selected to participate in what's called the accelerated leadership development program at red hat or al dp and part of that program gave me access to both a coach and a mentor and that was actually a great experience for me but also Changed the way I look at relationships just in general in the office And so I had a coach The one thing about and you may be wondering what's the difference between a coach and a mentor If they're formally using that title in my case a coach didn't a coach never answered a single one of my questions with anything other than a question They were actually a great sounding board to kind of figure out what I wanted But they really uh, it wasn't I didn't really get to know my coach that well I mean, you know, I got to know them kind of on a personal level But uh for the most part they were just someone to talk to and bounce ideas off of during that time This was like a roughly one year program And so the coach was actually great. It was nice to have somebody to talk to But the mentor in that case was even better And in my case, uh, they were having trouble with finding new mentors inside red hat And so they started to look for people outside red hat I happened to get matched with somebody in the finance industry And this was very interesting. He was a business guy. He was not a technologist in any way And the funniest thing for me was he also happened to be unemployed at the time he He uh, they had matched me with someone who had was in the in the process of changing careers It was taking a couple months off And so I like to joke that I thought the mentorship uh experience with with him went very well Because before uh, he started mentoring me. He did not have a job But after he was done, he did have a job. And so I think that I was a successful mentee for him But the there was a couple things that were really key Which he didn't the thing that was nice about is he didn't know any of the people I read had he didn't know Who I was talking to or why and that caused Him to ask questions that I wouldn't normally get asked and also helped me learn things like You know, he would just ask me questions You know like he if I was having a problem or trying to figure out how to get some process through a red hat Um, he would ask me, you know, just kind of pointedly ask are other people listening to this guy or is everybody ignoring him? Uh, and the reason that's important that was important to figure out because that changes how I would you know How I'd approach a problem. Are we uh, you know one versus the world here trying to do what we think is right Or was this just kind of a was this a long shot thing that we were going to try to do And so it was really it was just really refreshing to be able to talk very plainly and bluntly about things that were going on at work This was the first mentor I had that was very career focused with me So I went from having I would say technical mentors in the past To having one that was more focused on career because that was the specific goal that I had for myself Um in that leadership program and so I'll talk about goals in a minute But uh, you know really understanding what you're looking to get out of your mentor will help you both pick who what kind of mentor you should be looking for But also what you want out of them And of course, uh for for mentoring I I've got three mentees at the moment two from various mentorship programs at red hat And one of them who just reached out directly to me and asked for it and they're at all levels of the company One of them is a a senior director I've got a the rest of them. I think one of them is an associate manager right now And so right now I'm mentoring mostly management manager people on the manager track, but certainly at all levels of their career And it's been very rewarding to to help them through that these are You know, they have Troubles and successes and we talk through them and I find it very rewarding to to mentor now so, um You know Bennett a good mentorship engagement has all of the following traits. So let's just say you're looking to get into a mentorship situation What what what what is a good engagement look like? What should you be looking for? One of them is trust You need to be able to be completely open with each other and even explicitly setting those boundaries at the start of the relationship That you're creating a safe space that shouldn't be discussed outside of that that space um Is good. It means that you can be very frank and playing with your your mentor and Hopefully be free of judgment, you know, certainly You know if you I don't know punched a fellow employee Probably going to get a little bit of judgment out of that But if you're simply lost and not sure what to do like making sure that you have someone safe to go talk to Is important Also making sure you have clearly understood goals This is something that I've realized both as a mentee and a mentor In the case of my packaging sponsorship, I knew exactly what I wanted I wanted to become a packager. I had some specific packages in mind I wanted to learn how to use the packaging guidelines as the tome and so, you know Ignacio helped me on that on that path With uh with my ldp program I was career focused and so I wanted to I was very focused on making sure I made better connections within the company Outside of engineering people. I didn't know that well and also and this was interesting for you remotees for those of you that are working remotely We also decided to just work on my internal brand And I I still feel it's funny to say that your internal brand But it was about making sure that uh making sure that I knew what I was to be known for So that way if I wasn't in a meeting in In boston or raleigh or any other of the major hubs They read it has that people would remember and think of me I'll say we need to go to mike with this instead of trying to handle it on their own And so, you know, these were specific goals that I had But I've also been in mentorship situations where no specific goals happen And we just kind of met and talked about what had been going on that week and maybe some specific problems But without goals, there's no direction on where that relationship should go And those engagements have been less successful. I think you're just less impactful for both the mentor and the mentee Flexibility is also very important You know mentees are on their own journey and they're going to make their own decisions as they should You should never go into a mentorship situation Thinking that you're going to help you're going to teach that person what decisions they should be making Because they're always going to be on a different path than you and so having the flexibility to know what they're doing How you can help them is important But also that flexibility is going to be required in case you happen to be mentoring someone that is completely outside of your scope of expertise which uh, you know, it's uh, I have found Mentoring and menteeing with uh people outside of of my engineering scope Has been very helpful. It's a very different perspective on things and really makes me think And then of course Part of that is something's mutually beneficial for both the mentor and the mentee I think it's obvious that the mentee will will benefit from a mentorship involvement, but The the mentor often does too. This allows me to get at redhead at least I've gotten better insights into different teams That I would normally interact with and I've gotten to learn about other products and even other lines of business that I have no typical interaction with but you know, it's made me smarter and and Give me a better understanding of how red hat works. And so I think that's also great so Just to throw a couple of quotes up here. One of these was from bill gates who was mentored by By the what's his name the oracle? Warren Buffett He said I picked warm warren is somebody that I have learned an immense amount from just hearing his stories of how He dealt with tough situations And how he thought through long how he thought long term How he models the world if you get a chance to spend time with people like that. It's fantastic And also one from Oprah Winfrey Who was mentored by Maya Angelou throughout her life as far as I can tell She was always there for me guiding me through some of the most important years of my life Mentors are important. I don't think anybody makes it in the world without some form of mentorship and so You know, I think these are just people that I think these are both examples of people I think have very long multi-year very long relationships with their mentors I haven't been in a situation like that. But I think if you're able to to find somebody like that It's a it's a great situation to be in And so I've mentioned this a little bit but my experience with mentoring others The the big things are regular contact If you I have found that about every other week works Maybe every week, but if you go to every month or less than that It's just not going to work and it really helps me as a mentor when the mentee is the one driving these things Making sure that they're the ones reaching out to set up meetings. Don't expect your mentor to do the The groundwork there I trust and open this our must and making sure that I know what their goals are Are really the big the big keys to success because those are all the things that help me help them And without that regular contact It's hard for me to know what's going on in their lives and things like that So I just kind of mind my my little tip there And so here's what you should do if you want to be to be a mentor if you want to be a mentee So make sure as as mentee make sure you have a clear goal in mind Your mentor can't help you if you don't know what you want and I know that that can be a very big ask I've certainly gone through several points in my career where I just didn't know what I wanted to do next Those would actually have been fairly poor Situations to get a mentee All right. Sorry to get a mentor But if if you're very clear about well, I want to figure out I I feel lost and I want to find that next thing That could be a goal And so just as long as you're up front about that you could at least talk about it But I've still found those those situations are not so great It's much better to have a clear goal in mind to talk to somebody Also, make sure you find somebody that you respect You can ask them directly or if you don't know them But you know somebody that does one of your peers ask for an introduction Um But don't just blindly reach out to someone and say hey, will you be my mentor and then Not really have anything else in mind. It'd be great to say hey, I love what you did with this project Um, you know, I'm hoping to do something like that in my future Would you my mentor just as long as you have some interactions with them You wouldn't want to reach out to somebody famous or even like in your You know someone way up in your company that you have no interactions with because uh, You know, they just may they may not go the way you think unless there's some some prior connection there And finally is to commit If you find someone willing to mentor you don't waste their time Make sure you're the one setting up the meetings doing the follow-ups do the work If your mentor gives you a book to read or an article to read make sure you read that before your next meeting And you know take take their word seriously and That's these are all things that have worked for me in the past both on both sides of of the mentorship and mentee ship And I'm hoping that they will will help you as well And so with that I'd like to thank you all and if there's any questions I don't know. I think I saw something in the q&a. I saw some things here. Oh, there are there's there's plenty of q&a So I'll just go through and read this Um, I can't see the chat while I'm reading the q&a unless somebody wants to read the q&a to me I don't know if anybody else is in video here with me, but uh I can just get to it. I can do that for you Yeah, go ahead Yeah, so the first question is have you found yourself growing in directions that are orthogonal to your mentorship goals? I That that are that are what to my mentorship goals that are orthogonal Oh, um Sometimes I I think uh, no, I think I'll give you an example I we read here right now managed services are becoming a pretty big thing and i'm on the rail side So we've got a couple of managed services, but we're not like we don't have pagers on our on our hips and so, uh, I think for me It's been valuable to kind of get back into that world. I was you know on call for 15 years or something like that before I switch over to engineering And uh, as I as I meet with them. I found myself Realizing how important it will be to teach my own team how to prepare things to be managed services um, I think that that's been that's been nice, but I guess that's how I'll answer that one Okay, uh another one. What is one pitfall you have seen for mentors and one pitfall for mentees advice on how to overcome or avoid those pitfalls I think there there's been a couple of them Every once in a while if you're in a mentorship program, you will get matched with someone you know And if you have a pre-existing relationship with someone who was used to be a peer Or some of you don't respect in that way that can be awkward. So just be upfront about and say I don't think this one's gonna work. Don't try to make it work. It gets it gets a little weird I think uh, the biggest pitfall I've seen from the mentee side is uh, Is is not having a clear goal in mind And and maybe you know, I haven't seen too many problems or pitfalls on the mentorship side since most of what they're supposed to be doing Is helping but I could imagine an area where your mentor may disagree with your goals And at that point you may just want to find a different mentor just as you would a doctor or somebody else that You know, you're you're going to for advice on something Another question How do you manage the transition from one mentor to another either positive or negative or both? Yeah, it's it's interesting one thing I like about mentorship programs A good mentorship program is they have a distinct beginning and end And so if you both go in knowing that ahead of time, well, we're going to do this for six months or a year or 18 months or whatever Then at the end you you have a boat you start with a kickoff meeting You say hey, this is what we're going to do and you have a closing meeting and you just you know, let them know You you share with them some of the things that you've learned and just you know, have a good Assorted close. I almost always end with you know, feel free to reach out in the future if something comes up You'd like to chat very quickly but yeah at that point you you end you end the relationship and then you you would shut the You delete any future calendar invites things like that and go from there I have one of my mentorship relationships right now Is is open-ended and so we've been meeting for about a year now. There's not going to be a distinct end I enjoy meeting with him and You know, we'll just see see how that goes in the future But at the moment that's one that doesn't have an end And I guess if it becomes a problem, I'll just have to bring it up to and say I don't have time anymore or something And you have to find another mentor. That's just kind of how we do it Yeah, here's one from your experiences. Have you ever found a need to discontinue a mentorship? How do you think this should be handled in context of fedora present? I have in in one and this is kind of goes I'll share a little bit more about the one I was referring to earlier there was somebody that was working with me as a peer in Uh an open shift in the very early days. We're both engineers kind of lead engineers working on something And we basically got blind matched in this mentorship program And so at that point both of our by that point both of our careers had taken a very wide turn Um, I'd gone into management and he uh, and had done well at that and he had been an individual contributor I was just trying to figure out that next thing and while he had very clear goals We had already had a pre-established relationship And so it was just a little awkward to get out of that. We ended up keeping the meetings But mostly just to talk about what was going on in our respective orbs and things It wasn't really a true mentorship relationship. And so we just kind of were upfront about that ahead of time I said, hey, if this is weird, we can just do something else. Just kind of acknowledge it and we moved on Looking at the time, I just I'm just going to ask one more question What would be some books you would recommend such as for mentees? Books for mentees. Well, there's I've got some back here. I think It obviously depends on their goals. I am a big fan of uh, Dale Carnegie's how to win friends and influence people That is one I give to people especially if they have uh, you know, if they're in that If they're in a scenario where they feel people aren't listening to them or you know, they they're So convinced of their convictions that they're right, but they've been unable to convince others That's a good one that I mentioned to people. Otherwise it tends to be more Uh specific to what their goals are like if they some people want to work on delegation Better and so I've got you know different goals for different different books for different to different people But that's one another one. I guess I I've I've given out a lot is good strategy bad strategy The difference and why it matters That has been a good one for people that are kind of mid-career that are looking to interact with people who are more late career I think that's a really good one to To help take that leap and figure out what the language means And and how to actually deal with strategy. So that's another one that I Suggest a lot Thanks a lot and I think it's I need to visit some bookstore tomorrow morning to buy some books And I'll see you around Thank you everybody. I hope this was useful