A Mentoring Story
In the Spring of 2002, I was enthralled by the software development community that had grown up around the ideas in Kent Beck’s book eXtreme Programming Explained. This was my first exposure to a software development “process”, so I sought out the local XP community to learn more. I quickly found ChAD, the Chicago Agile Devleopers group and started attending regularly. After one of my first meetings, I introduced myself to the group’s leader (with a shaky hand and untold waves of anxiety). His name was Wyatt Sutherland. I offered to help Wyatt with the group, which mostly meant moving chairs and lugging 12-packs of Coke to meetings. A month or two later, I told Wyatt that I wanted to “apprentice” under him. Neither of us really knew what that meant, and I can’t even remember his response. But I do remember that we started meeting for lunch or breakfast periodically after that.
Later that year, I saw an opportunity to convince my employer that we should try an XP pilot project. I told Wyatt about my plan, but admitted that I was in over my head. He reassured me that I could pull it off. This helped focus our breakfast conversations for a while, which was a thrill since this was the closest we ever came to working together. Eventually I pitched the pilot project and it was given the green light. The experience I gained through that project was a result of the confidence Wyatt helped create in me. That experience propelled me into ThoughtWorks a year later, which was my “big break” as a software developer.
A decade later, when I look back on that time with Wyatt, though, the aspects of our relationship that have stuck with me aren’t about software or technology. I saw in Wyatt more than a software developer or community leader. He is a man with a full life. Wyatt is a father of four, a husband, a musician, and a technologist. One of the highlights of my relationship with him was bringing my wife to a string quartet he was playing in. Wyatt is a world-class cellist. Listening to him play that night was inspiring. I arrived with an assumption that Wyatt was a software developer with a cello hobby. I left the concert with a vision for a full and integrated life for myself.
Thanks Wyatt for your encouragement, your example, and for your time.
This was posted as part of the Mentoring Story exercise from the apprentice.us mailing list.
