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docs/outreach/mentoring.md

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+# Mentoring
+
+Mentoring an outreach program participant is a great way to help bring up the
+next generation of open-source contributors and support the Zulip community. The
+experience of watching your mentee's skills develop can be truly rewarding, and
+we encourage you to give it a try.
+
+Signing up to mentor means committing to being reliable source of support on your
+mentee's open-source journey over the course of the program. By signing up,
+you're committing to dedicating roughly 3-5 hours a week to the program.
+
+Mentors generally have weekly calls with their mentees to answer any questions
+and help make sure that everything is on track. You are also expected to help
+program administrators keep an eye on your mentee's progress, and flag any
+concerns you might have.
+
+Mentors can refer to the excellent [GSoC Mentor
+Guide](https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/) for detailed guidance,
+including GSoC's expectations, and best practices that can apply to any program.
+
+## Who can mentor
+
+In order to mentor with Zulip, you need to have spent significant time working
+on Zulip yourself. You need to be familiar with what it takes to get work
+integrated, so that you can help your mentee with this process. We encourage
+anyone who has successfully completed a mentorship program with Zulip as a
+participant to give mentorship a try!
+
+Note that you do _not_ need to have any expertise in the part of the
+codebase that your mentee is working in. We have seen many successful
+mentor-mentee relationships where the mentor was new to the parts of
+the codebase that were the focus of the project.
+
+You also do not need to be a currently active contributor to Zulip. Our
+expectations and patterns of getting work done have been quite consistent over
+time, and it should be easy for you to catch up on anything that's changed since
+you were actively involved.
+
+## Supporting your mentee
+
+At the start of the program, please read our [guide](experience.md) for program
+participants to understand Zulip's expectations for your mentee.
+
+What exactly you focus on in your mentorship will vary from week to week, and
+will depend on what your mentee needs. It might be any combination of:
+
+- Helping your mentee plan, chunk, and prioritize their work.
+
+- [Manually testing](../contributing/code-reviewing.md#manual-testing) UI
+  changes and helping find bugs or identify corner cases needing
+  further discussion.
+
+- Providing early feedback on visual and technical design questions.
+
+- Helping your mentee figure out how to test their changes.
+
+- Helping your mentee break their PRs into [coherent
+  commits](../contributing/commit-discipline.md).
+
+- Doing [code review](../contributing/code-reviewing.md) of your
+  mentee's work.
+
+- Helping with the technical design of projects and making sure
+  they're aware of useful and relevant reference materials.
+
+- Pair programming with your mentee to share useful tricks.
+
+- Emotional support when things feel like they aren't going well.
+
+It might seem challenging to review code if you're not an expert on
+your mentee’s focus area. Don't let yourself be intimidated!
+Reviewing changes to code your don't fully understand is a common
+experience in software development, and you can still provide valuable
+feedback.
+
+If you don’t understand something about the changes being made, there
+is a good chance others would also find it confusing. Asking your
+mentee for an explanation will itself be valuable feedback on what
+parts of the PR need to be commented or rewritten in a more clear way.
+
+### Establishing communication patterns
+
+Over the course of the program, you will interact with your mentee both
+synchronously (e.g., on calls, pair programming, and/or via chat in the
+development community), and asynchronously (in the development community and on
+GitHub).
+
+It's important to ensure that there are regular opportunities for synchronous
+interactions, which are the best way to resolve some types of questions and
+concerns, and will help your mentee feel supported.
+
+Please schedule at least one synchronous interaction opportunity with your
+mentee per week. A weekly call is highly recommended, as calls can be especially
+helpful for getting a feel for how your mentee is doing, and lowering the bar
+for asking questions and sharing concerns. A good pattern might be a weekly
+call, plus 1-2 other regular time slots when you and your mentee check in in the
+development community.
+
+## Managing challenges
+
+We rely on you to proactively flag your concerns to Zulip's program
+administrators as early as possible. Situations you should bring up include:
+
+- Lack of communication from your mentee, e.g., missing a scheduled call,
+  missing multiple [check-ins](./experience.md#communication-and-check-ins), lack
+  of response to PR reviews, etc.
+
+- If your mentee's rate of progress on their projects is not commensurate with
+  the hours of work they are supposed to be dedicating to the project.
+
+- If you are not seeing improvement in response to the feedback you give.
+
+- If your mentee seems to be struggling, deeply frustrated, or otherwise is not
+  having a good experience with the program.
+
+- Any significant questions or concerns raised by your mentee that you cannot
+  resolve, which for some reason your mentee cannot raise directly.
+
+- If it turns out that you cannot dedicate sufficient time to support your mentee
+  for all or part of the remaining duration of the program. As long as Zulip's
+  program administrators are informed, we can make sure someone else covers for
+  you.