6 ms·

Ask HN: Tips on finding mentors?

34 points by samh748 5y ago

I've always been intrigued by the idea of having mentors, whether it's for professional or personal purposes, research projects, start-ups, etc., but never dared to put it into action. I've had some success getting one-off advice from some very generous people, but it seems that any sort of longer-term mentorship only exist if one were formally obligated in some way (e.g., start-up investors, research advisors/committee, paid coaches). Have any of you had success finding mentors? How did you go about it? Any tips, advice, suggestions, warnings?

ada1981 5y ago
Yes, many. Here is the best way to get mentorship. 1. Identify someone who already has something that you want. 2. Figure out what they most want to accomplish next. 3. Do whatever it takes to help them accomplish their next goal. Note: Do not ask to be paid. Do not ask for anything in return. Do not even ask them to “mentor you”. By virtue of helping them Accomplish their next goal, You will aquire the mindset and knowledge you need to accomplish your goal, it happens almost as if by magic. No one teaches this, and it’s proven to be the single greatest way to get a mentor that I have found.
ibash 5y ago
Find a way to meet with them regularly. The problem with one off advice is that it’s really hard to get context. The best mentors will have context on you, you want them to be all up in your business.
- samh748 5y ago
  But how does one find a mentor in the first place?
cable2600 5y ago
Used websites like: https://findamentor.com/ https://findamentor.com/ Find one that is a good fit for you. Don't just contact people randomly find one willing to mentor you.
unobatbayar 5y ago
You don't specifically need to have mentors. Just follow and talk to more and more people who inspire you.
- muzani 5y ago
  An alternative is books, but there are often a lot of subtleties left out. What I've learned from mentors is mostly habits like organisation and keyboard shortcut/debugging workflow. What's also useful is having feedback like don't do this, it doesn't matter, or do more of that.
  - jstx1 5y ago
    The value of a mentor comes from getting advice that's very specific to you - books can't give you that.
anon2020dot00 5y ago
I'd suggest OP try the slatestarcodex sub-reddit, it's a community which seems to enjoy talking about topics in-depth which has a different focus from Hacker News.
- samh748 5y ago
  Oh that's cool! I haven't explored around the interwebs enough to know all the cool nerdy places like this. Thanks!
muzani 5y ago
The best tip I've followed is "When the student is ready, the master will come". Mentors are abundant. Most people out there can teach something and are learning something. Like dating, most of those people are not the right fit. And yet there's so many that you're likely to have a few in your life without trying to find one, but searching helps. There's always a level above you but often that level is invisible to you if you don't qualify. You need skill in that the student can absorb the mentor's lessons. If you're too far below the skill level, the mentor looks like an idiot. Their advice can run contrast to "common wisdom". 90% of people are in the bottom 90%. You have to be at a high enough level that you can see the flaws in common advice. You have to be open to be proven wrong. The philosopher al-Ghazali used to say that you have all the advice you need. Why aren't you following it? Why does the advice taste bitter? To many people, knowledge is something you use to get something - work, promotions, recognition, validation. But that makes it difficult to learn. Knowledge is a tool to be used. If you're not using it, chances are you fear disproving what you know. Now a lot of potential mentors are happy to teach. Partly because it's lonely. They want someone who understands them, and there's an ego boost to impressing someone. They want to bounce ideas off someone on the path, especially younger people who often see things from a different perspective. And sometimes there's a pragmatic use of an apprenticeship. One of my favorite mentor-apprentice relationships was reverse engineering a game, where the apprentice found me tons of data and I taught him how to process it. But I'd still say the simplest route is improving yourself. Apply all of the advice you've been given, until you know what works and what doesn't. Which would often make the right mentor visible and attract their attention.
- muzani 5y ago
  Movies are actually very good at showing a natural mentor relationship. Every Pixar movie has a mentor, often two. For mental development, and emotional. The hero is stuck on something and only gets out of it with the mentor's help. The 7-min Pixar short Piper is IMO the most direct example.
  - samh748 5y ago
    Gonna add a bit of my own difficulties with this: I've come across many sources that speak so highly of these mentorship relationships, and even go as far as to recommend how to contact them and follow up and whatnot. It all sounds easy in theory, so romantic even, but in execution, I've found it to be much more complicated than that. How does one actually present themselves positively without coming off as desperate? And what if we are desperate (which often is the case for clueless people like myself)? I understand the notion of "When the student is ready, the master will come." and how it makes sense. But isn't it the clueless people that need the most help? What am I missing here? I certainly miss the days of grad school when I had advisors and a committee and entire buildings of people to network with and discuss everything. The moment I stepped into the "real world"; damn, was I clueless. I remember going to job interviews, following the advice I've been given from endless books and articles, eager to impress, but in retrospect most likely just made a fool out of myself. / end of rant
morelandjs 5y ago
You might add what your general career goals are to this thread. Could be someone with good experience interested in providing mentorship.
- samh748 5y ago
  Haha I've already tried, in a very insane way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30976497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30976497

samh748 5y ago

Taken another way, mentors are basically evaluating and selecting for individuals who are worthy of their time and attention. Granted, they have to, because time and attention are limited. But what I take issue with, is exactly the romanticization of mentorship in movies and self-help books that we see way too often. Mentorship basically does not exist for those in the bottom. As with everything else, "the rich only get richer". / end of another rant

muzani 5y ago
> "Mentorship basically does not exist for those in the bottom" I love movies for this and also why I recommended Piper. It's about a baby bird learning to get food, and a crab teaches it. But you can apply the same pattern everywhere. Movies have something called the Three Act Structure. Act 1: Hero faces a problem, tries to solve it their way, gets deeper in it. Act 2 begins where the hero is now stuck. There's a mentor by now that the hero doesn't acknowledge. The hero will continue to fail on their own and can't see the solution. Then the mentor points it out and all is solved, with Act 3 being the denouement. In Lion King, Timon & Pumbaa mentor Simba from being scared/guilty to being carefree, and again from carefree to bold. In romance films, it's usually two people changing a part of themselves for the other person. Boy learns to be honest, girl learns to be less judgemental. Conan learns that flesh can be stronger than steel. Sarah Connor learns about humanity from a robot assassin. And so on. I still like comparing it to dating, in that it just happens. It's awkward to make it formal and long term. Sometimes we have rituals for this, like university and 1-1s. Often you have to start the process long before the ritual, though.
- samh748 5y ago
  Thanks again for this! > I still like comparing it to dating, in that it just happens. It's awkward to make it formal and long term. Sometimes we have rituals for this, like university and 1-1s. Often you have to start the process long before the ritual, though. This last bit is especially golden. The informal process, the ritual. Too often I get fixated on trying to rush into "formal" territory, which then ruins things because it wasn't time for that yet. The informal aspects haven't played out and matured enough to become formal, something like that. Thank you so much for your "mentorship" :)