3.2The Mentoring Mindset

Principles

Ask before you tell. When a junior comes to you with a question, resist the urge to immediately give the answer. Instead, ask questions that guide them to discover it:

Junior: "Should I automate this test?"

Bad mentor response: "Yes, automate it with Playwright."

Good mentor response: "How often does this test need to run? What is the cost of running it manually each time? Is the UI stable enough that the test will not be flaky? What do you think?"

Make thinking visible. When you are testing, narrate your thought process out loud. Juniors cannot learn your reasoning if they only see your actions.

"I am going to test the coupon field next. I am prioritizing it because coupons involve money, and money-related bugs have high business impact. My first test will be a valid coupon, to make sure the happy path works. Then I will try an expired coupon, a coupon for a different product, a coupon with extra spaces, and no coupon at all. I am thinking about boundary conditions and negative cases."

Normalize not knowing. When you do not know something, say so openly. "I am not sure how this API handles concurrent requests. Let me look it up." This teaches juniors that expertise is not about knowing everything -- it is about knowing how to find out.

Separate feedback on the work from judgment of the person. "This test case is missing edge cases" is feedback on the work. "You always miss edge cases" is a judgment of the person. The first is constructive. The second is destructive.