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In his younger years someone should have given him some guidance I've had many jobs and these are all software development jobs. Even in a relatively privilege

In his younger years someone should have given him some guidance I've had many jobs and these are all software development jobs. Even in a relatively privileged field like software, I never had any kind of mentorship, ever. The days of older folks mentoring and helping younger folks are gone, because most older folks themselves are struggling with their own careers/lives. Unless young people specifically seek and forge good relations, put effort into finding mentors - it isn't going to happen. By the time most young people (me included) realize this, it is too late. Some people get lucky with good teachers and parents, but many don't. This is what happens in a system where profit is put above everything else, no-one has the time or interest to think about anything else other than this quarter's profits.

sokoloff 8y ago
That seems odd to never gotten mentorship. I was at one time a very good coder. I obviously wasn't born that way, but became that after many years of working alongside [often much] better coders and, in one case, quitting a job when I was ~4 years out of school and realized I wasn't going to get any better at that particular job. Did you never work with better coders? Did they never talk to you or never do a code review? If they did, that's mentorship.
- devonkim 8y ago
  Mentorship is hard to come by or even give when the common advice for ambitious people is to job hop every year or so basically - what kind of a professional relationship can develop within maybe just a year that is of substance? This is easy enough to do in an area with a lot of good tech companies and community to develop a stronger professional network but is really unlikely to happen in a lot of places with maybe a handful of employers with any decent size (software) engineering organization. I lived in Asheville, NC (about as isolated as any rural area in the US) for a bit and I was a little surprised to see I got more LinkedIn job recommendations for mechanical, chemical, or other “hard sciences” type of engineering jobs because Greenville, SC was the closest metro area evidently and even the Google and Apple datacenters were pretty darn sparsely staffed. Most of the software community there worked remotely as can be expected, but I was glad to see how talented and passionate everyone I met was. Thing is, almost everyone there had developed their careers before moving - staying put in an area that can’t reward you is obviously not good for a career but this begs the question of why decently talented people do not move to better opportunities. But really, moving makes it super hard to build a good professional network and you have fewer opportunities as a result which causes a downward spiral of lack of improvement in skills. I’m really not that much better at anything besides rote memorization of some trivial technical facts than I had 10 years ago because I never have been challenged technically in that time period. This causes atrophy no different than lack of physical exercise. And unless you work another 20-30 hours / week outside of work you’re not going to catch up with those that do spend their time at jobs that appropriately challenge them and help them realize their full potential. Hence, location is among the more important factors as someone early in a career I’ll stress and is precisely why moving to some high cost area is worthwhile... if you can make use of what they have to offer. Most of the advice I give to my juniors isn’t about code itself as much as larger design and architectural patterns that can cause years and years of effort to go down the tubes or require millions of dollars of human effort to correct. These are the decisions that cause major rifts even for architects. Heck, some older programmers I’ve worked with refused to write tests because they thought they’re a waste of time / crutches - does this mean I am a bad student or something? Not necessarily.
  - jessicatechexp 8y ago
    Good points. I liked how you put "job hopping" which is #1 advise on HN for improving your wages against "lack of mentorship" which people here often complaint about. Maybe it's high time we realize that the problem doesn't exist outside of us and maybe we are part or significant part of the problem.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
commandlinefan 8y ago
> the days of older folks mentoring and helping younger folks I’m one of the older folks (mid-40’s) and I find myself increasingly surrounded by younger folks (20’s or so) who are looking for guidance and help - the problem with that is that the dominant corporate “prove you still deserve to have a job by closing as many tickets as possible and increasing your velocity and meeting impossible deadlines” ensures that any older folk (who, remember, are held to an even higher standard than the younger folk because they’re more expensive) who spend any amount of time trying to mentor younger folk will find themselves out of a job after a few months.

sokoloff 8y ago

That seems odd to never gotten mentorship. I was at one time a very good coder. I obviously wasn't born that way, but became that after many years of working alongside [often much] better coders and, in one case, quitting a job when I was ~4 years out of school and realized I wasn't going to get any better at that particular job. Did you never work with better coders? Did they never talk to you or never do a code review? If they did, that's mentorship.

devonkim 8y ago
Mentorship is hard to come by or even give when the common advice for ambitious people is to job hop every year or so basically - what kind of a professional relationship can develop within maybe just a year that is of substance? This is easy enough to do in an area with a lot of good tech companies and community to develop a stronger professional network but is really unlikely to happen in a lot of places with maybe a handful of employers with any decent size (software) engineering organization. I lived in Asheville, NC (about as isolated as any rural area in the US) for a bit and I was a little surprised to see I got more LinkedIn job recommendations for mechanical, chemical, or other “hard sciences” type of engineering jobs because Greenville, SC was the closest metro area evidently and even the Google and Apple datacenters were pretty darn sparsely staffed. Most of the software community there worked remotely as can be expected, but I was glad to see how talented and passionate everyone I met was. Thing is, almost everyone there had developed their careers before moving - staying put in an area that can’t reward you is obviously not good for a career but this begs the question of why decently talented people do not move to better opportunities. But really, moving makes it super hard to build a good professional network and you have fewer opportunities as a result which causes a downward spiral of lack of improvement in skills. I’m really not that much better at anything besides rote memorization of some trivial technical facts than I had 10 years ago because I never have been challenged technically in that time period. This causes atrophy no different than lack of physical exercise. And unless you work another 20-30 hours / week outside of work you’re not going to catch up with those that do spend their time at jobs that appropriately challenge them and help them realize their full potential. Hence, location is among the more important factors as someone early in a career I’ll stress and is precisely why moving to some high cost area is worthwhile... if you can make use of what they have to offer. Most of the advice I give to my juniors isn’t about code itself as much as larger design and architectural patterns that can cause years and years of effort to go down the tubes or require millions of dollars of human effort to correct. These are the decisions that cause major rifts even for architects. Heck, some older programmers I’ve worked with refused to write tests because they thought they’re a waste of time / crutches - does this mean I am a bad student or something? Not necessarily.
- jessicatechexp 8y ago
  Good points. I liked how you put "job hopping" which is #1 advise on HN for improving your wages against "lack of mentorship" which people here often complaint about. Maybe it's high time we realize that the problem doesn't exist outside of us and maybe we are part or significant part of the problem.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

commandlinefan 8y ago

> the days of older folks mentoring and helping younger folks I’m one of the older folks (mid-40’s) and I find myself increasingly surrounded by younger folks (20’s or so) who are looking for guidance and help - the problem with that is that the dominant corporate “prove you still deserve to have a job by closing as many tickets as possible and increasing your velocity and meeting impossible deadlines” ensures that any older folk (who, remember, are held to an even higher standard than the younger folk because they’re more expensive) who spend any amount of time trying to mentor younger folk will find themselves out of a job after a few months.