The Hidden Impact of a Mentor

Not every lesson comes from someone you admire. In fact, one of the most influential people in my development journey was someone I clashed with constantly during university. At the time, I would have jokingly thought of them as my nemesis. But in hindsight, they were one of my most important mentors.

We butted heads over everything—approaches to assignments, coding styles, architecture philosophies. But underneath those arguments was a consistent theme: they understood and applied SOLID principles like no one else I’d met. And while I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I learned a great deal from those clashes.

Fast forward to my time at Brightside, and I began to see the value of those lessons. As I worked on modernising codebases and advocating for more maintainable systems, I realised I was drawing on the exact principles my so-called nemesis had preached. Abstraction. Separation of concerns. Clear, single responsibilities. They weren’t just theoretical—they were the solutions to the very problems I was facing.

That experience taught me something profound: great mentors don’t always wear the badge. Sometimes, they challenge you, frustrate you, and push you out of your comfort zone. But they also leave a mark that shapes your thinking long after the debates have ended.

Now, I try to pay it forward. I share the same foundational lessons with the teams I lead, not because they’re fashionable, but because I know they work. And whenever I see a bit of healthy disagreement or debate on my team, I don’t shut it down. I welcome it. Because I know from experience that growth often starts with friction.

In the end, that nemesis taught me how to think like an architect. And I’m grateful for every argument we ever had.