9 ms·

Be good to your mentors

157 points by jger15 5y ago

abhaynayar 5y ago
As someone who doesn't like getting spoonfed, I didn't value the importance of a good mentor until I got one at my company.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  I've wasted countless hours justifying every significant step during pair/mentoring sessions. I loathe theological arguments where things just are, so I try to give it my best. Sometimes it pays off but I've had young know-it-alls fighting on every step in the process of fixing their shit. Ego is what makes or brakes a man/woman
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Wow. That’s a missing link for me. Had never thought of mentorship so clearly.
Dave3of5 5y ago
Most of the young grads I've mentored have been a pain the bum, seemed to not want any help and generally had a bad attitude.
- bell-cot 5y ago
  This +10 (if I could). Whether you really enjoy a bit of mentoring, are just trying to be a nice old man, or it's officially part of your job, you have to be picky about who you mentor, and what the mentoring relationship looks like. First cut: The kid must have decent emotional maturity, appreciate your advice, and really benefit from it. Definitely don't let yourself be tagged "mentor" until those are clearly established. You ain't signing up to be the long-suffering parent of some teenage rebel. (That said, my experience with younger folk has not been nearly so bad as Dave3of5's.)
- ifokiedoke 5y ago
  +1000. Almost everyone who's "singled" me out to be a mentor has been some greedy CS + Business grad who asks me mostly emotional or money-related questions that I essentially can't answer other than with "It depends on you and what you personally want." This one guy specifically, who keeps reaching out to me, once kept me on a call for almost an hour basically asking me whether or not he should re-neg on an offer he signed ONE WEEK BEFORE THE JOB STARTED because he'd kept applying and got an offer somewhere else that paid more. I basically said "I mean if that's what you really want, you should do it, but be aware that the tech world is small and it's not going to look good" and he just kept trying to rationalize it because he'd clearly already made up his mind. Another time, he sent me an email that started with "I just wanted to thank you for your help last time" but then immediately would delve into some other totally asinine quandary he'd gotten into because he had no integrity and/or trust in other people. These people are impossible to help...
Errancer 5y ago
My issue is that I rarely meet people who would answer my questions in a satisfying way. Usually I have to ask question after question for a frustrating amount of time to understand something and not leave the topic with "yea it is clear" when it is not. Its fine with coworkers and in regular life but I would need a person whom I would call a "mentor" to be able to, you know, teach me something and usually it feels like I am using others to learn myself.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  When someone asks me something and I want him to learn something, I'm trying to answer enough for him to be able to continue learning on his own. He's supposed to go on his own research after that. Mentoring is turning to the right direction, but you need to walk your path yourself to really learn something. Just answering the questions is something like consulting which is fine but not really counts as mentoring in my book.
  - ihateolives 5y ago
    > When someone asks me something and I want him to learn something, I'm trying to answer enough for him to be able to continue learning on his own. He's supposed to go on his own research after that. This can be done so many ways. I had "mentor" who used to point out a line in the log or a file and just say "This shoud give you a hint." No, it did not. I know it's there, I need you to tell me why it's significant so that I can go from there. Just playing "guess what I'm thinking" wastes time for both of us. If I'm too dumb for you then come down to my level or ask someone else to mentor me. Just being wise mysterious office Yoda just isn't helpful.
    - Dudeman112 5y ago
      At some point they have to be able to do things by themselves. Sure from a pedagogical POV you don't want them stuck forever trying to make a leap they can't yet make, but being hand fed answers doesn't really work at making the underlying heuristics and cognitive habits (and sometimes info) stick.
- 5y ago
Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
I've not had a single notable mentor in a decade. Just managers, who change every two or three years, talking about career path to tick a box on the review process. Long ago, I decided to be my own mentor, by assiduously documenting how I do things, technical questions I've had and their answers, and use this knowledge base as my mentor.
- theteapot 5y ago
  Me too. People who have "mentors" are usually career obsessed dicks.
  - hackernewds 5y ago
    Bit of an overreaction
  - cehrlich 5y ago
    I've had some people who I would describe as 'mentors' in retrospective, but they were just people I met who were a few years ahead of me in their career/life and were patient with me and helped me and were always up to talk. These people exist, no need to be cynical about it.
    - rpadovani 5y ago
      Isn't this what a mentor is? I never said to somebody: “you are my mentor now”, but contributing to open-source projects I definitely had a couple of guys who helped me constantly over the years, of which I am genuinely grateful for.
      - cehrlich 5y ago
        Yes, that's my point. I don't think it's necessary to "go out and seek a mentor", just be kind to and stay in touch with people you run into who are good.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
barry-cotter 5y ago
The first piece of advice stems from what has been dubbed in Silicon Valley “the small group theory.” It goes like this: When working on any kind of problem, task or question, embed yourself in a small group of peers with broadly similar concerns. And: The second near-universal piece of advice is this: Get mentors. Those two pieces of advice, unlike most advice, hold for a very broad variety of contexts. Do read the column, but here is some further detail: Mentorship can be general or specialized. I have had classical-music mentors, art-market mentors, country-specific mentors when I lived in Germany and New Zealand, foreign-language mentors, chess mentors, economics mentors, philosophy mentors, writing mentors and friendly mentors to help with the basic emotional issues of life. I’ve tried to find mentors for just about everything. Sometimes the relationship lasts only a week or a month, other times for years. Aside from providing teaching and advice, the mentor, like the small group, helps make an issue or idea more vivid: A living, breathing exemplar of success stands before you. The mentor makes a discipline feel more real and the prospect of success more realistic. As a corollary, in addition to trying to find mentors, you should be willing to become a mentor yourself. Even if you do not have advanced understanding in some particular area, almost certainly there is someone who knows less than you do and who could use assistance. Being a mentor also helps you understand how to learn and appreciate your own mentors. A mentor doesn’t have to be older than you, and in fact some of your mentors probably should be younger, especially since technologies are starting to change more rapidly. If you are 50 years old, the idea of an 18-year-old crypto mentor isn’t crazy. If the metaverse turns into a reality, don’t look to the graybeards for tutelage. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/12/two-all-purpose-pieces-of-advice-small-groups-and-mentors.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/12/tw...
surrTurr 5y ago
What are some good starting points for finding a mentor as student, if you’re not working as a junior developer yet? Not having a senior developer, who’s there to answer your programming/career questions, seems to be one of the biggest downsides of not working for a company.
- tpaschalis 5y ago
  One thing to try might be contributing to Open Source? Choose a project that looks interesting to you (ideally with a large community and modern tech stack) and join their Slack/Discord/Mailing List. You'll need to be patient and humble and it's going to take a while until you feel really comfortable, but read a lot, ask questions and try to contribute small bits here and there. This will put you in touch with many interesting and experienced people, plus it's usually a great learning experience.
- rahulroy 5y ago
  A good way to find mentors when you are a student is to join a developer communities. Here are some ways: 1. Join local Meetups: There's no substitute for offline communication. 2. Join Online community on Slack/Discord/IRC etc: Pick your favorite tool(programming language, framework, libraries etc) and get involved on Github, StackOverflow. Also, you need to balance the relationship. How do you add value to their life is something to ponder about.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  Get involved in undergrad research at your department. And if you do so, work in person with your mentor and team. You won't get much out of it unless you're immersed in that environment and get the connections and social growth from it.
simsla 5y ago
The hard thing for me is finding which questions to ask. Most of my 1:1s are just "err, want me to give you an update on what's been going on?"
- bobmichael 5y ago
  One of the most valuable things about a conversation with a mentor is getting insight into their thinking processes: how do they decompose a problem into smaller parts, what mental models they make use of, etc. Given that, in my experience I've always learned a lot when I've asked my mentors to talk about a challenge they're currently facing and have them ramble on about it while I ask clarifying questions.
bloopernova 5y ago
Companies who are in constant chaotic crunch time build tech debt partly because the people who would mentor do not have time or energy to help others. I know that several times in my career, I've had a good mentor and I've grown hugely during those times. I've found that you can mentor in different ways, some more effective than others: Writing good, clear documentation depends on people reading it, which depends on them knowing it's there! Showing them during a group meeting rather than just mentioning the docs has a much better result. Simply saying "my door is always open" doesn't get much in the way of engagement. You, as a mentor, have to put in some footwork attracting people and maintaining the contact. It's all too easy for a junior person to feel overwhelmed by sprints and deadlines, for them to push the mentor session out a week over and over. Or even remember to schedule a session. It's also easy for the juniors to depend on the mentor-level folks taking care of the more complex things. It's faster, and during the everlasting crunch time, less burden on the junior. So to get the team benefit you have to spend the time going through the "pain" of having someone slower and less knowledgeable do The Thing. (Maybe more as I wake up, I hope this is useful to someone and not complete bullshit!)
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  > which depends on them knowing it's there! This. Indexing is So. Damn. Important. Documentation and knowledge discovery is crucial, and still very much a WIP. I don't claim to have the answer. I write a lot of really relevant, heavy-duty documentation, with my projects. That no one reads. I know this, because they keep asking me questions that are in the docs. I am their index.
  - math-dev 5y ago
    I was thinking about this. I think its okay to be the index if it means you only need to spend a couple of minutes digging out the link and sending to them vs recreating the full explanation each time
    - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
      So far, that is how I do it. My stuff isn't particularly popular, so it doesn't take much of my bandwidth (well, actually, one project is very popular, but that has been taken over by a fairly energetic and talented team).
nomilk 5y ago
Shameless plug: I made Hangswith so I could book a meeting with a career mentor and pay them the equivalent of a nice bottle of wine for an hour of their advice once a quarter. https://www.hangswith.com/ https://www.hangswith.com/ It's basically Calendly with a more personal profile which makes you easy to find via search engines and easy for someone to find a time, book you, and pay you. EDIT: if you offer career mentorship, or chess coaching and wanna join, you're very welcome to!
- tetsusaiga 5y ago
  This is pretty neat actually. A little constructive input: Seeing more of the people who you can potentially book calls with might make people more willing to sign up. I'm interested, but with only 3 examples it leaves me in the "Ehh I'll save this and think about later" zone. Good work though.
  - nomilk 5y ago
    Based on your feedback, I updated the homepage to move the talent to the top of the page! There are 6 bookable people so far (28 users total, but most sign up just to make bookings). Now all 6 bookable users are visible on the landing page without having to scroll. Thanks again for the honest and actionable feedback!
    - tetsusaiga 5y ago
      Glad to hear you found that helpful and wanted to try it out! I'll have to go ahead and sign up so I can take a closer look.
      - nomilk 5y ago
        Super appreciative of the feedback! And please do give us a try. You're welcome to join our slack community too in case you have more ideas: https://www.hangswith.com/contact https://www.hangswith.com/contact
hluska 5y ago
When I play the role of mentor, I like to reverse that relationship as often as possible. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from being a mentor because I’m just as open to being mentored by my mentee. I find that relationships break down too quickly if they are only one directional. And I wasn’t born fully formed with a big book of answers I could refer to whenever I needed. It’s also a good form of training. It’s hard to be mentored and it’s hard to be a mentor. If I make the relationships two sided, we both get to practice both sides…
ramesh31 5y ago
I've sort of become the defacto front end expert at our company, and accordingly people will reach out to me for help all the time. The questions tend to be sortable into two buckets: 1. Questions where the asker has thought deeply about the problem and has some specific technical hurdle that isn't necessarily straightforward and requires an expert judgement call. 2. Questions that show the asker has absolutely no understanding of the problem at hand, where I will have to spend 15 minutes just getting to the root of the issue and explaining why their reasoning was fundamentally flawed. Then we can start addressing the actual issue. I'll spend all day long happily helping people with the first type of question. But I really have zero patience whatsoever for the second type.
repler 5y ago
Thank you for sharing this - I wish I had read something like this much earlier in my career. Sadly I am unable to properly thank my mentors of 25+ years ago but perhaps I can still send a nice note to those who more recently are "someone who answers questions more than once.”
thenerdhead 5y ago
The best mentors are those who make time regardless of if the world is on fire to help you out. Not many people are willing to do that. When you see that, hold onto it as long as you can because it can go away in an instant. If you are on the other side and now doing the mentoring, you need to make it your highest priority. Pay it forward to others. This is a beautifully put sentiment on appreciating those who didn't have to help, but chose to anyway. It all starts with you simply asking somebody. I asked people out of my league to mentor me and they took it on because I was the first to ask them. Being open to invite others to do the same to you is equally important. There's always something to learn from each person in the world.
ahmed_ds 5y ago
I struggle with the distinction between mentors and employers. Any one got any advice for me? I am struggling with getting my first job in sales but I am not sure what should I seek. A mentor or an employer. I assume for a mentor I have to work for free or take a reasonable payout because he would spend reasonable time in helping me grow. But how do I figure out what is this 'reasonableness' when money is involved?
- rawgabbit 5y ago
  You want a job that pays you money. Mentoring is an overhyped word like agile. A true mentor is someone who teaches you how to think. A mentor will want to help you succeed because he appreciates you. Personally I avoid selfish people who gossip like the plague. For moral standup trustworthy people I go out of my to help them succeed even if that involves me poo pooing their work so I can show them a better way. For those Macchiavellian types, they usually piss so many people off. All I have to do is snack on popcorn while watching the drama they unleash. They are usually gone before I can remember their name.
alexfromapex 5y ago
I've had to mentor a junior engineer recently and there has been lots of insubordination and questioning my knowledge, which I'm actually quite sure of, which has really been annoying. I think it stems from my approach of humility which inexperienced engineers mistake as lack of knowledge. Would not recommend being insubordinate or questioning your mentor if they have decades more experience than you or they will stop being your mentor.
- me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
  I just stop mentoring people like that. Their loss, and honestly I don’t want to spend my time around such people anyway because some personality traits are just incompatible to work with.
- Swizec 5y ago
  As someone with a fairly confrontational style who has later grown older and more battle scared, I think you’re missing an important aspect of mentoring. Mentoring isn’t about telling the person what to do, it’s about leading them to realize the thing you’re teaching on their own. Telling doesn’t work, they haven’t experienced the pain! Things you take for granted, they think are stupid. Because they don’t know! Incessant questioning is a fantastic way to learn. The only other way than painful experience. And remember, you are sure of your knowledge. To them it sounds like alien speak. They can’t relate.
  - munchbunny 5y ago
    Mentoring isn’t about telling the person what to do, it’s about leading them to realize the thing you’re teaching on their own. I'd take this a step further. Depending on how similar the career tracks are for the mentor and mentee, mentors often won't or can't know the right answer for the specific situation the mentee is in. As a mentor, your role isn't necessarily to have the answer either, it's just to help them figure it out for themselves one way or another.
  - nomel 5y ago
    > Incessant questioning is a fantastic way to learn. The only other way than painful experience. I am a questioner, but my group seems to be filled with people who aren't. How do you mentor those that seem to enjoy the pain route? I have trouble assuming that they'll ask questions when they need help. I think my group is unique where most are highly educated, but from a non-software field, now doing software probably 50% of their time. From what I've noticed, the higher the degree in this non-software field, the fewer questions they ask, and the more comfortable they are with their confusion, even making up strange illogical explanations rather than attempting any real understanding. This group has cemented the idea that knowledge and problem solving ability are completely orthogonal.
dpeck 5y ago
There are few words that have lost as much meaning and impact in the last decade than “mentor”. An assigned mentor isn’t one. They’re either a boss, a peer, or an onboarding helper. Mentorship is deeper, lasts longer than just being at one job, and isn’t something that everyone is going to get. In my experience they’re very rare, and rarely is the word mentor used in relation to it, expect in hindsight.
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  Look, I think assigning a mentor isn't a bad thing to start. It gets people who are interested or required to "mentor" (defined here as supporting the development of less tenured/senior employees) connected more easily with the target folks who need/want/are required to have mentors. Then, if it sticks, it sticks. If it doesn't stick, it at least provides some context for both the mentor and mentee if that relationship or the idea of mentorship wasn't executed well. Agreed that many times, it is an onboarding helper and someone who just acts as a friend you can ping in the early months of starting.
Plasmoid 5y ago
I was involved as mentor with BuiltByGirls for a while but I ended up dropping out. I had too many matches that blew me off, or wouldn't respond to emails, or just disappeared. I was averaging like 50% drop-out rate which just screams that it was not worth my time.

157 points by jger15 5y ago

As someone who doesn't like getting spoonfed, I didn't value the importance of a good mentor until I got one at my company.

beebeepka 5y ago
I've wasted countless hours justifying every significant step during pair/mentoring sessions. I loathe theological arguments where things just are, so I try to give it my best. Sometimes it pays off but I've had young know-it-alls fighting on every step in the process of fixing their shit. Ego is what makes or brakes a man/woman

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Wow. That’s a missing link for me. Had never thought of mentorship so clearly.

Dave3of5 5y ago

Most of the young grads I've mentored have been a pain the bum, seemed to not want any help and generally had a bad attitude.

bell-cot 5y ago
This +10 (if I could). Whether you really enjoy a bit of mentoring, are just trying to be a nice old man, or it's officially part of your job, you have to be picky about who you mentor, and what the mentoring relationship looks like. First cut: The kid must have decent emotional maturity, appreciate your advice, and really benefit from it. Definitely don't let yourself be tagged "mentor" until those are clearly established. You ain't signing up to be the long-suffering parent of some teenage rebel. (That said, my experience with younger folk has not been nearly so bad as Dave3of5's.)
ifokiedoke 5y ago
+1000. Almost everyone who's "singled" me out to be a mentor has been some greedy CS + Business grad who asks me mostly emotional or money-related questions that I essentially can't answer other than with "It depends on you and what you personally want." This one guy specifically, who keeps reaching out to me, once kept me on a call for almost an hour basically asking me whether or not he should re-neg on an offer he signed ONE WEEK BEFORE THE JOB STARTED because he'd kept applying and got an offer somewhere else that paid more. I basically said "I mean if that's what you really want, you should do it, but be aware that the tech world is small and it's not going to look good" and he just kept trying to rationalize it because he'd clearly already made up his mind. Another time, he sent me an email that started with "I just wanted to thank you for your help last time" but then immediately would delve into some other totally asinine quandary he'd gotten into because he had no integrity and/or trust in other people. These people are impossible to help...

Errancer 5y ago

My issue is that I rarely meet people who would answer my questions in a satisfying way. Usually I have to ask question after question for a frustrating amount of time to understand something and not leave the topic with "yea it is clear" when it is not. Its fine with coworkers and in regular life but I would need a person whom I would call a "mentor" to be able to, you know, teach me something and usually it feels like I am using others to learn myself.

vbezhenar 5y ago
When someone asks me something and I want him to learn something, I'm trying to answer enough for him to be able to continue learning on his own. He's supposed to go on his own research after that. Mentoring is turning to the right direction, but you need to walk your path yourself to really learn something. Just answering the questions is something like consulting which is fine but not really counts as mentoring in my book.
- ihateolives 5y ago
  > When someone asks me something and I want him to learn something, I'm trying to answer enough for him to be able to continue learning on his own. He's supposed to go on his own research after that. This can be done so many ways. I had "mentor" who used to point out a line in the log or a file and just say "This shoud give you a hint." No, it did not. I know it's there, I need you to tell me why it's significant so that I can go from there. Just playing "guess what I'm thinking" wastes time for both of us. If I'm too dumb for you then come down to my level or ask someone else to mentor me. Just being wise mysterious office Yoda just isn't helpful.
  - Dudeman112 5y ago
    At some point they have to be able to do things by themselves. Sure from a pedagogical POV you don't want them stuck forever trying to make a leap they can't yet make, but being hand fed answers doesn't really work at making the underlying heuristics and cognitive habits (and sometimes info) stick.
5y ago

Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago

I've not had a single notable mentor in a decade. Just managers, who change every two or three years, talking about career path to tick a box on the review process. Long ago, I decided to be my own mentor, by assiduously documenting how I do things, technical questions I've had and their answers, and use this knowledge base as my mentor.

theteapot 5y ago
Me too. People who have "mentors" are usually career obsessed dicks.
- hackernewds 5y ago
  Bit of an overreaction
- cehrlich 5y ago
  I've had some people who I would describe as 'mentors' in retrospective, but they were just people I met who were a few years ahead of me in their career/life and were patient with me and helped me and were always up to talk. These people exist, no need to be cynical about it.
  - rpadovani 5y ago
    Isn't this what a mentor is? I never said to somebody: “you are my mentor now”, but contributing to open-source projects I definitely had a couple of guys who helped me constantly over the years, of which I am genuinely grateful for.
    - cehrlich 5y ago
      Yes, that's my point. I don't think it's necessary to "go out and seek a mentor", just be kind to and stay in touch with people you run into who are good.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

barry-cotter 5y ago

The first piece of advice stems from what has been dubbed in Silicon Valley “the small group theory.” It goes like this: When working on any kind of problem, task or question, embed yourself in a small group of peers with broadly similar concerns. And: The second near-universal piece of advice is this: Get mentors. Those two pieces of advice, unlike most advice, hold for a very broad variety of contexts. Do read the column, but here is some further detail: Mentorship can be general or specialized. I have had classical-music mentors, art-market mentors, country-specific mentors when I lived in Germany and New Zealand, foreign-language mentors, chess mentors, economics mentors, philosophy mentors, writing mentors and friendly mentors to help with the basic emotional issues of life. I’ve tried to find mentors for just about everything. Sometimes the relationship lasts only a week or a month, other times for years. Aside from providing teaching and advice, the mentor, like the small group, helps make an issue or idea more vivid: A living, breathing exemplar of success stands before you. The mentor makes a discipline feel more real and the prospect of success more realistic. As a corollary, in addition to trying to find mentors, you should be willing to become a mentor yourself. Even if you do not have advanced understanding in some particular area, almost certainly there is someone who knows less than you do and who could use assistance. Being a mentor also helps you understand how to learn and appreciate your own mentors. A mentor doesn’t have to be older than you, and in fact some of your mentors probably should be younger, especially since technologies are starting to change more rapidly. If you are 50 years old, the idea of an 18-year-old crypto mentor isn’t crazy. If the metaverse turns into a reality, don’t look to the graybeards for tutelage. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/12/two-all-purpose-pieces-of-advice-small-groups-and-mentors.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/12/tw...

surrTurr 5y ago

What are some good starting points for finding a mentor as student, if you’re not working as a junior developer yet? Not having a senior developer, who’s there to answer your programming/career questions, seems to be one of the biggest downsides of not working for a company.

tpaschalis 5y ago
One thing to try might be contributing to Open Source? Choose a project that looks interesting to you (ideally with a large community and modern tech stack) and join their Slack/Discord/Mailing List. You'll need to be patient and humble and it's going to take a while until you feel really comfortable, but read a lot, ask questions and try to contribute small bits here and there. This will put you in touch with many interesting and experienced people, plus it's usually a great learning experience.
rahulroy 5y ago
A good way to find mentors when you are a student is to join a developer communities. Here are some ways: 1. Join local Meetups: There's no substitute for offline communication. 2. Join Online community on Slack/Discord/IRC etc: Pick your favorite tool(programming language, framework, libraries etc) and get involved on Github, StackOverflow. Also, you need to balance the relationship. How do you add value to their life is something to ponder about.
the_snooze 5y ago
Get involved in undergrad research at your department. And if you do so, work in person with your mentor and team. You won't get much out of it unless you're immersed in that environment and get the connections and social growth from it.

simsla 5y ago

The hard thing for me is finding which questions to ask. Most of my 1:1s are just "err, want me to give you an update on what's been going on?"

bobmichael 5y ago
One of the most valuable things about a conversation with a mentor is getting insight into their thinking processes: how do they decompose a problem into smaller parts, what mental models they make use of, etc. Given that, in my experience I've always learned a lot when I've asked my mentors to talk about a challenge they're currently facing and have them ramble on about it while I ask clarifying questions.

bloopernova 5y ago

Companies who are in constant chaotic crunch time build tech debt partly because the people who would mentor do not have time or energy to help others. I know that several times in my career, I've had a good mentor and I've grown hugely during those times. I've found that you can mentor in different ways, some more effective than others: Writing good, clear documentation depends on people reading it, which depends on them knowing it's there! Showing them during a group meeting rather than just mentioning the docs has a much better result. Simply saying "my door is always open" doesn't get much in the way of engagement. You, as a mentor, have to put in some footwork attracting people and maintaining the contact. It's all too easy for a junior person to feel overwhelmed by sprints and deadlines, for them to push the mentor session out a week over and over. Or even remember to schedule a session. It's also easy for the juniors to depend on the mentor-level folks taking care of the more complex things. It's faster, and during the everlasting crunch time, less burden on the junior. So to get the team benefit you have to spend the time going through the "pain" of having someone slower and less knowledgeable do The Thing. (Maybe more as I wake up, I hope this is useful to someone and not complete bullshit!)

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
> which depends on them knowing it's there! This. Indexing is So. Damn. Important. Documentation and knowledge discovery is crucial, and still very much a WIP. I don't claim to have the answer. I write a lot of really relevant, heavy-duty documentation, with my projects. That no one reads. I know this, because they keep asking me questions that are in the docs. I am their index.
- math-dev 5y ago
  I was thinking about this. I think its okay to be the index if it means you only need to spend a couple of minutes digging out the link and sending to them vs recreating the full explanation each time
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    So far, that is how I do it. My stuff isn't particularly popular, so it doesn't take much of my bandwidth (well, actually, one project is very popular, but that has been taken over by a fairly energetic and talented team).

nomilk 5y ago

Shameless plug: I made Hangswith so I could book a meeting with a career mentor and pay them the equivalent of a nice bottle of wine for an hour of their advice once a quarter. https://www.hangswith.com/ https://www.hangswith.com/ It's basically Calendly with a more personal profile which makes you easy to find via search engines and easy for someone to find a time, book you, and pay you. EDIT: if you offer career mentorship, or chess coaching and wanna join, you're very welcome to!

tetsusaiga 5y ago
This is pretty neat actually. A little constructive input: Seeing more of the people who you can potentially book calls with might make people more willing to sign up. I'm interested, but with only 3 examples it leaves me in the "Ehh I'll save this and think about later" zone. Good work though.
- nomilk 5y ago
  Based on your feedback, I updated the homepage to move the talent to the top of the page! There are 6 bookable people so far (28 users total, but most sign up just to make bookings). Now all 6 bookable users are visible on the landing page without having to scroll. Thanks again for the honest and actionable feedback!
  - tetsusaiga 5y ago
    Glad to hear you found that helpful and wanted to try it out! I'll have to go ahead and sign up so I can take a closer look.
    - nomilk 5y ago
      Super appreciative of the feedback! And please do give us a try. You're welcome to join our slack community too in case you have more ideas: https://www.hangswith.com/contact https://www.hangswith.com/contact

hluska 5y ago

When I play the role of mentor, I like to reverse that relationship as often as possible. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from being a mentor because I’m just as open to being mentored by my mentee. I find that relationships break down too quickly if they are only one directional. And I wasn’t born fully formed with a big book of answers I could refer to whenever I needed. It’s also a good form of training. It’s hard to be mentored and it’s hard to be a mentor. If I make the relationships two sided, we both get to practice both sides…

ramesh31 5y ago

I've sort of become the defacto front end expert at our company, and accordingly people will reach out to me for help all the time. The questions tend to be sortable into two buckets: 1. Questions where the asker has thought deeply about the problem and has some specific technical hurdle that isn't necessarily straightforward and requires an expert judgement call. 2. Questions that show the asker has absolutely no understanding of the problem at hand, where I will have to spend 15 minutes just getting to the root of the issue and explaining why their reasoning was fundamentally flawed. Then we can start addressing the actual issue. I'll spend all day long happily helping people with the first type of question. But I really have zero patience whatsoever for the second type.

repler 5y ago

Thank you for sharing this - I wish I had read something like this much earlier in my career. Sadly I am unable to properly thank my mentors of 25+ years ago but perhaps I can still send a nice note to those who more recently are "someone who answers questions more than once.”

thenerdhead 5y ago

The best mentors are those who make time regardless of if the world is on fire to help you out. Not many people are willing to do that. When you see that, hold onto it as long as you can because it can go away in an instant. If you are on the other side and now doing the mentoring, you need to make it your highest priority. Pay it forward to others. This is a beautifully put sentiment on appreciating those who didn't have to help, but chose to anyway. It all starts with you simply asking somebody. I asked people out of my league to mentor me and they took it on because I was the first to ask them. Being open to invite others to do the same to you is equally important. There's always something to learn from each person in the world.

ahmed_ds 5y ago

I struggle with the distinction between mentors and employers. Any one got any advice for me? I am struggling with getting my first job in sales but I am not sure what should I seek. A mentor or an employer. I assume for a mentor I have to work for free or take a reasonable payout because he would spend reasonable time in helping me grow. But how do I figure out what is this 'reasonableness' when money is involved?

rawgabbit 5y ago
You want a job that pays you money. Mentoring is an overhyped word like agile. A true mentor is someone who teaches you how to think. A mentor will want to help you succeed because he appreciates you. Personally I avoid selfish people who gossip like the plague. For moral standup trustworthy people I go out of my to help them succeed even if that involves me poo pooing their work so I can show them a better way. For those Macchiavellian types, they usually piss so many people off. All I have to do is snack on popcorn while watching the drama they unleash. They are usually gone before I can remember their name.

alexfromapex 5y ago

I've had to mentor a junior engineer recently and there has been lots of insubordination and questioning my knowledge, which I'm actually quite sure of, which has really been annoying. I think it stems from my approach of humility which inexperienced engineers mistake as lack of knowledge. Would not recommend being insubordinate or questioning your mentor if they have decades more experience than you or they will stop being your mentor.

me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
I just stop mentoring people like that. Their loss, and honestly I don’t want to spend my time around such people anyway because some personality traits are just incompatible to work with.
Swizec 5y ago
As someone with a fairly confrontational style who has later grown older and more battle scared, I think you’re missing an important aspect of mentoring. Mentoring isn’t about telling the person what to do, it’s about leading them to realize the thing you’re teaching on their own. Telling doesn’t work, they haven’t experienced the pain! Things you take for granted, they think are stupid. Because they don’t know! Incessant questioning is a fantastic way to learn. The only other way than painful experience. And remember, you are sure of your knowledge. To them it sounds like alien speak. They can’t relate.
- munchbunny 5y ago
  Mentoring isn’t about telling the person what to do, it’s about leading them to realize the thing you’re teaching on their own. I'd take this a step further. Depending on how similar the career tracks are for the mentor and mentee, mentors often won't or can't know the right answer for the specific situation the mentee is in. As a mentor, your role isn't necessarily to have the answer either, it's just to help them figure it out for themselves one way or another.
- nomel 5y ago
  > Incessant questioning is a fantastic way to learn. The only other way than painful experience. I am a questioner, but my group seems to be filled with people who aren't. How do you mentor those that seem to enjoy the pain route? I have trouble assuming that they'll ask questions when they need help. I think my group is unique where most are highly educated, but from a non-software field, now doing software probably 50% of their time. From what I've noticed, the higher the degree in this non-software field, the fewer questions they ask, and the more comfortable they are with their confusion, even making up strange illogical explanations rather than attempting any real understanding. This group has cemented the idea that knowledge and problem solving ability are completely orthogonal.

dpeck 5y ago

There are few words that have lost as much meaning and impact in the last decade than “mentor”. An assigned mentor isn’t one. They’re either a boss, a peer, or an onboarding helper. Mentorship is deeper, lasts longer than just being at one job, and isn’t something that everyone is going to get. In my experience they’re very rare, and rarely is the word mentor used in relation to it, expect in hindsight.

darkwizard42 5y ago
Look, I think assigning a mentor isn't a bad thing to start. It gets people who are interested or required to "mentor" (defined here as supporting the development of less tenured/senior employees) connected more easily with the target folks who need/want/are required to have mentors. Then, if it sticks, it sticks. If it doesn't stick, it at least provides some context for both the mentor and mentee if that relationship or the idea of mentorship wasn't executed well. Agreed that many times, it is an onboarding helper and someone who just acts as a friend you can ping in the early months of starting.

Plasmoid 5y ago

I was involved as mentor with BuiltByGirls for a while but I ended up dropping out. I had too many matches that blew me off, or wouldn't respond to emails, or just disappeared. I was averaging like 50% drop-out rate which just screams that it was not worth my time.