Security/Mentorship/Mentor

Mentor Application Process

The current approach for mentors to apply is to send an email to yboily@mozilla.com with the subject "Mentor Application - <your name>". This application should include the following:

• Name
• Location
• Overview
  • The first paragraph should explain who you are, and why you are pursuing the mentorship. We want to know how you will contribute as a mentor.
  • The second paragraph should include some information about the project you would like to mentor; it can be one of the existing projects, or it can be a new project, but we need to know how that will shape up.
  • The third paragraph should include an estimation of your time commitment and a rationale of how you will meet that in relation to your other obligations. Mentors are expected to be able to commit a minimum of 2 hours per week per mentee, and should be committing more, depending on the complexity of the mentorship. Mentors are also required to attend a monthly status update meeting with the mentorship group to discuss how to improve the program, solicit feedback and provide guidance.
  • Other information that might be relevant should be included

Before You Apply

Taking on a mentorship is a significant responsibility. As a mentor you will be acting as a member of the Mozilla community, and will be working to lead a project to fruition under your tutelage. This is an opportunity to demonstrate leadership skills, the ability to effectively manage one or more individuals, and show your ability to affect change in a product and in a community.

The time commitment of 2 hours per week is the bare minimum, you should reasonably expect to spend more hours performing code review, helping to guide your mentee to the correct or better solutions to a problem, and providing constructive feedback.

Beyond the time commitments, mentorship is an important part of building managerial skills; the ability to help a person grow and develop to take on new challenges is a widely sought after skill, but it is one that takes practice and experience to exercise effectively. Becoming an effective mentor is a valuable skill and a critical building block when creating and growing a community or team.

Before applying you are strongly encouraged to come onto IRC (Instructions Here) and ask about the existing projects on #security, and introduce yourself to the team you will be working with through your mentorship projects.

Next Steps

Once you submit your application, a member of the security team will be in touch with you to discuss the projects available for mentorship, ideas you have for projects, and what the commitment means. The goal of this meeting is to help you understand the importance and scope of the time commitment, and help you to determine the best approach for you in taking on mentorships.

The goal of this meeting is to prepare you for evaluation of mentees that might apply for your projects, and to help you understand the goals of the mentorship program overall. As you progress through the mentorship program you will have the opportunity to define success and prevent failure of these projects, and we want to make sure you are properly equipped for that role.

Example

Name: Yvan Boily Location: British Columbia, Canada, PST

Overview I am an Application Security Manager at Mozilla, and I manage a team of developers and security engineers that work to secure our products and services. I am interested in the mentorship program because I want to help people learn about security, and have too many project ideas to complete them all myself, or with my team.

I would like to mentor the following projects:

• Graph Visualization of Web Applications
• High Performance Event Management Platform

I am also interested in proposing an additional project, based on the implementation of features in the Minion security platform, but need to discuss how to structure those features as mentored projects.

Working with the security community is a core part of my responsibilities at Mozilla, and I expect to mentor at least two community individuals in addition to my existing responsibilities at Mozilla. I am willing to mentor individuals that can meet at times in my time zone (PST), from 0900h to 2100h.