There is one question we hear all the time: can someone become a good engineer by taking courses alone? After years of closely supporting people, our honest answer is — courses help, but they are rarely enough. That realization led to the creation of the DW-Corp mentorship program.
A mentorship program that began in 2021 — and continues today
The program began in 2021 and is still going strong today. It is led by two mentors: Danrley Pereira and Aulus Diniz. The idea is simple to describe and difficult to execute — take people at the beginning of their careers and support them closely until they become genuinely strong software engineers.
This is not a course with an end date. It is a long-term relationship built on consistency, the right amount of accountability, and presence. When someone joins, they join to be developed, not to attend classes.
What a course alone cannot provide
We like courses. They teach syntax, concepts, and the happy path. The problem is what they almost never teach: judgment. What do you do when faced with confusing legacy code, an ambiguous requirement, a bug that stubbornly refuses to make sense, or an architectural decision whose cost will only become clear six months from now?
This kind of discernment does not fit into a video lesson. It is built by making mistakes with an experienced person by your side, pointing out what you were not seeing. That is exactly the gap the mentorship program fills.
Deliberate practice, done right
One of the program's pillars is deliberate practice. This does not mean repeating something for the sake of repetition or simply accumulating hours. It means practicing at the right level of difficulty — one step beyond what feels comfortable — with fast, specific, and honest feedback.
The difference lies in the loop: try, receive a precise assessment of what worked and what did not, adjust, and try again. Repeated intentionally, day after day, this cycle transforms people. It is slow by nature, and that is precisely why it works.
Craftsmanship in real projects
The second pillar is applying software craftsmanship principles to real projects. Tests that provide confidence, design that holds up, code review as a conversation, and care for the people who will maintain the software later. Treating software as a craft, not as a task to be checked off.
And all of this happens in work that matters, not toy exercises. When the project is real, the consequences are real too — and that is when good habits stop being theory and become a way of working.
The result: strong engineers, sometimes without going through junior level
Looking at the whole picture, what we see makes us proud. Several mentees have already earned certifications and been hired by technology companies. Some joined directly as mid-level engineers, skipping the junior level — not because they took a shortcut, but because they were ready.
We will not stretch this into numbers here; each journey deserves its own story, and those stories will be told in dedicated articles. The broader point is what matters: real practice with mentorship produces people who can solve real problems sooner.
Developing the next generation
None of this happens in isolation. The program is connected to the Software Craftsmanship Brasília (SCCB) community and to DW-Corp's broader work of developing the next generation of professionals. Learning together, teaching together, and raising the level of the people around us.
In the end, that is what has kept us going since 2021: developing the next generation. No magic formula, no easy promises — just deliberate practice, close mentorship, and projects worth working on. It remains the best thing we do.
