Mentorship, Retention, and Finding Your Place in Tech

Why Mentorship Matters

Retaining women in CS is hard. As someone who wasn’t sure if this was the right career path for them, having a mentor made all the difference. While impostor syndrome was not a new phenomenon to me, the constant learning of new skills, languages, and being bombarded with technical advancements in AI made it difficult to believe that tech was a space in which I would excel.

Mentorship and community from other women in tech was probably the primary reason I finished my degree instead of switching majors. Actively engaging in communities where I felt like I belonged helped combat imposter syndrome and allowed me to pursue my interests instead of being dissuaded by fear of failure.

Mentorship is simpler than you think. Often there is a misconception that mentoring requires a lot of time. While that can be the case, often what I needed—and what many other young women in CS need—is to see someone like them succeeding, and to feel heard.

The most impactful conversations I’ve had with my mentor were not necessarily goals-based; they were times when:

  • She related to my personal experience
  • We celebrated a goal achieved
  • We had a candid conversation about bad experiences

Finding my mentor not only lifted me up, but led me to later pursue mentoring others, volunteering for Women in Computing community events, and working with others on interview prep and resume building.

What I’ve Learned from Being a Mentor

While being a mentor can be tiring and time-consuming, it helps you build skills as much as it helps your mentee. In that process, you start developing skills that are hard to build in isolation:

  • You learn to communicate clearly, because vague thinking is immediately exposed
  • You develop patience and judgment, knowing when to guide and when to step back
  • You learn the art of balancing honesty with encouragement
  • You gain new perspectives, often from questions that challenge your assumptions
  • Over time, you naturally grow into someone others look to for direction

Being a good mentor looks different for each mentee. Sometimes I am actively working with someone on LeetCode-style interview prep, and other times I am lending an ear and helping them practice public speaking. Ask your mentee what skills they want to develop and make sure you are a good match.

How to be a Good Mentee

I’ve recently been given the opportunity to start a mentorship program back up at my organization. After having run a mentorship program in college and supported younger students working towards their CS degrees, it is interesting to be on the other side of this program as a mentee.

In order to be an effective mentee, you really need to show up with a focused goal in mind. What skills does your mentor have that you want to learn? Can they give specific advice on career growth that you couldn’t find elsewhere? Expect to get out of the experience what you put in. Show that you value your mentor’s expertise and have taken steps to learn from them and support their work and ideas publicly.

In the age of AI, finding a secure job in tech can be tricky. To keep your job, you need to be good at what you do and explore the latest technology before it outpaces you. Mentorship creates a critical pathway to success, forcing you to create goals for yourself, stay on top of technologies, and expand your network.

Mentorship and Retaining Underrepresented Groups

There are numerous studies about the benefits of mentor-mentee relationships and the importance of role models in solving diversity problems. Studies like one from The National Bureau of Economic Research show that mentorship can significantly improve career outcomes, particularly for underrepresented professionals.

More recent studies using surveys and interviews have identified social isolation, a perceived lack of experience, and a sense of “not belonging” as key barriers preventing women from persisting in their CS studies. In fact, women are twice as likely to leave technical fields after graduation as opposed to their male counterparts—56% compared to 28% respectively.

Papers exploring similar topics found that women were more likely to leave computer science if they perceived the learning environment as “chilly” and not gender-inclusive. For example, if women do not see other women in high positions, they may perceive that there is no one to emulate and that they don’t belong. Mentorship can go a long way in reshaping those perspectives.

Outro

Most of this is common sense, but sometimes it is nice to be reminded that a little extra work from those willing to mentor and give their time can help the next generation. It goes a long way in helping someone gain the confidence and experience necessary to excel in their career. I know this to be true in my career and am lucky to have so many wonderful female mentors paving the way: my manager, staff engineer, sister, and friends.

P.S. Please forgive my typos, idiosyncratic capitalization, and grammar irregularities. I am a human, and I wrote this myself without the help of AI or generative tools. So yes… there are bound to be mistakes, but that is part of the fun of an informal blog post! ;)

References

  1. Caprino, K. (2025). Why Mentorship is key to Career Success Today and How to Cultivate it. Forbes.
  2. Sapna Cheryan, Allison Master, and Andrew N Meltzoff. (2015). Cultural stereotypes as gatekeepers: Increasing girls’ interest in computer science and engineering by diversifying stereotypes. Frontiers in Psychology.
  3. J McGrath Cohoon. (2001). Toward improving female retention in the computer science major. Commun. ACM.
  4. Orla Fallon. (2019). Factors Affecting the Attrition Rate of Women in Computing-Related Occupations. Trinity Women & Gender Minorities Review.
  5. Penelope Lockwood and Ziva Kunda. (1997). Superstars and me: Predicting the impact of role models on the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
  6. Westmark, J. (2025). Are referred candidates more likely to get hired? Ashby.
  7. Carolina Milesi, Lara Perez-Felkner, and Kevin Brown. (2017). Engagement, persistence, and gender in computer science: Results of a smartphone ESM study. Frontiers in Psychology.
  8. Katarina Pantic. (2020). Retention of Women in Computer Science: Why Women Persist in Their Computer Science Majors. Ph. D. Dissertation, Utah State University.
  9. Reshma Saujani. (2019). Brave, not perfect: Fear less, fail more, and live bolder. Currency.
  10. Virginia Smith and Gitanjali Swamy. (2016). Women In Tech: Addressing the Root Causes of Attrition.