Swift Mentorship Program

The Swift Mentorship Program is designed to encourage developers to actively participate in the Swift open source community through direct mentorship with experienced developers. The program is open to everyone! The program also looks to foster mentorship relationships within Swift’s community groups, for those who are interested. Members of Women in Swift and Black in Swift are strongly encouraged to participate!

Each mentee will have the opportunity to connect with and learn from an experienced developer within the Swift community, with the goal of them contributing code directly to an open-source project. The mentee can contribute to any open-source project written in Swift, or even in the Swift compiler itself, depending on the mentee’s learning goals. Mentors and mentees will be matched based on the learning goals of the mentee and the experience of the mentor, and mentees will work with their mentor on open source contributions for 12 weeks.

If the mentee has not contributed to the project before, they will first work with their mentor to submit their first patch and overcome any workflow hurdles. The core of the mentorship program is making contributions that work toward the mentee’s learning goals. These contributions can range from implementing a small feature within the project, to several independent bug fixes within the same area of the project. At the end of the mentorship program, mentees’ contributions and learnings will be featured in a dedicated post on the Swift.org blog.

Current Program

Timeline

Date Event
May 10th Mentee Survey Opens
May 24th Mentee Application Deadline
June 2nd Mentorship Pairings Announced
June 26th “Get Setup” Kickoff Event!
June 27th Mentorship Begins
August 1st Halfway Checkpoint
September 12th Mentorship Ends
September 18th Wrap-up Event!

Interest Surveys and Mentorship Matching

If you’re interested in being a mentee, please fill out the Mentee Interest Survey. This survey is not an application; but rather it will tell the Diversity in Swift work group about your technical interests and learning goals, which will be used to help match you with a suitable mentor. Although the survey won’t be evaluated like an application, the work group may not be able to match every interested mentee if there aren’t enough mentors, or if none of the mentors are equipped to help with your specific learning goals.

The Swift Mentorship Program is also a leadership opportunity for veteran community members, particularly if they are already an open-source project maintainer or frequent contributor. If you’re passionate about lowering the barrier to entry for new contributors in our community, please consider getting involved as a mentor! If you’re interested in participating as a mentor, please message @diversity-work-group on the Swift Forums.

Mentee Interest Survey

If you’re interested in participating as a mentee, please fill out the following survey and send your answers to @diversity-work-group on the Swift Forums. Your responses will be used to help match you with a mentor.

  1. If you are a member of a Swift community group, and you’d be interested in pairing up with someone in that group, please specify that group here:
  2. How important is it to have a mentor within one of your community groups?
  3. Are you 18 years or older?
  4. Where are you in your programming journey? Here are some questions you might want to answer as part of your response:
    • Do you want to write Swift or contribute to the compiler?
    • How much time have you spent with the Swift programming language?
    • Where do you think your strengths are? What have you enjoyed coding on the most?
  5. What barriers have you faced when making (or thinking about making) contributions to open source?
  6. What do you hope to get out of this program?
  7. What timezone are you in?
  8. Are there specific open-source projects, including personal projects, that you’re interested in contributing to? If so, please specify.
  9. Which of the following topics are you interested in?
    • UI programming
    • Swift on Server
    • Compiler development
    • Language design
    • Software Architecture
    • Testing
    • Other (please specify):

Frequently Asked Questions

Participation in the Swift Mentorship program is governed by the Swift Code of Conduct, and participants agree to the Swift Mentorship Program terms and conditions. If you have any questions or concerns throughout the program, please reach out to @diversity-work-group on the Swift Forums.

How are mentor/mentee pairs selected? Mentors and mentees will each fill out an interest survey. The survey is not an application, but rather it tells the Diversity in Swift work group about the participant’s interests, experience, learning goals, and more, which will be used to help the work group match mentor-mentee pairs. The interest surveys have a parallel set of questions to help evaluate whether the mentor has suitable experience to help the mentee with their learning goals. For example, the mentee questionnaire asks the mentee which specific skills/topics they are interested in working on, and the mentor questionnaire asks which specific skills/topics the mentor has experience with and can help a mentee learn about. A potential mentee will not be matched with a mentor if there are not enough mentors, or if there is not a suitable mentor to help them with their learning goals.
Are there any necessary qualifications to participate? There are no necessary qualifications for mentees — the mentorship program is open to anybody 18 years and older who is willing to learn about Swift! Since this program is designed to encourage and help diverse developers overcome barriers and actively participate in the Swift community, the Diversity in Swift work group strongly encourages members of Women in Swift and Black in Swift to participate. Mentors must be members of the Swift community (e.g., iOS developers, Swift compiler contributors, etc). Prior experience with mentorship is a plus, but not required.
I’m not a student. Can I still be a mentee? Yes! This mentorship program is not limited to students.
What should I expect from my mentor? You can expect your mentor to help guide you as you make contributions to an open source project, provide constructive feedback on your work, share their own experiences, and help you navigate the Swift community! You should not expect your mentor to make sure your contributions are accepted or assign work to you. You also should not expect your mentor to directly teach you. Think of your mentor as a teaching assistant rather than a teacher — they may suggest resources to aid your learning, answer questions, and discuss what you’ve learned, but they are not expected to give you a lecture on a technical concept.
What is the expected time commitment? Mentors are expected to meet with their mentees at least 2 hours per month. The mentorship pair can decide how to distribute that time throughout the month. Mentees are expected to spend at least an additional 2 hours per month working on their contributions.
How will mentors and mentees communicate? Most communication is expected to happen asynchronously on the Swift Forums. The mentorship pair may also decide to meet “face to face” via video chat or similar.
How long is the program term? 12 weeks.
How are open source tasks for mentees identified? If the mentee does not have any ideas in mind, project maintainers and mentors may identify starter tasks that are suitable for newcomers to the project. For example, the Swift compiler project has issues labeled StarterBug on bugs.swift.org. Beyond the initial contribution, mentors or mentees may suggest small “projects” that are implementable given the expected time commitment. Otherwise, every open source project has an endless supply of issues to be fixed! Participants may rely on the issue tracking system for the open source project to identify these tasks.
Is there an evaluation at the end of the program? There is no formal evaluation at the end of the mentorship program. However, there will be an exit survey for all participants. There will also be a post on the Swift.org blog to highlight mentees’ contributions and their learnings.
I’m interested in being a mentor! What should I do? Please reach out to @diversity-work-group on the Swift Forums if you are interested in participating as a mentor.
I have more questions. What should I do? Please reach out to @diversity-work-group on the Swift Forums with any additional questions you have!