What Could I Possibly Learn From a Mentor Half My Age

I totally believe that everybody has something to offer to everybody else. I'm 43, can I learn from a 23 year old? Abso-lutely! And vice-versa, of course.

But... I really reject this whole "millenials as digital natives" narrative, in terms of the idea that millenials have some unique relationship to technology and some innate sort of technological prowess. It's just a rehashing of an earlier idea which dates back at least to the 80's, where "kids have to program their parents VCR's". There's always this notion that "the young" - at a point in time - are more technical. But in absolute terms? Well, Gen-X kids grew up with access to computers and a lot of technology as well, although it was (obviously) the technology of the the time. I would posit that there's no reason to assume that a Millenial would be any more inherently technical than a Gen-X'er.

We hired a new grad last year... he's very sharp, though of course inexperienced when it comes to working as part of a team on a large project (but time will fix that).

Now, I have no idea how this is possible, but he has deeper knowledge of Hg and Git than anyone I've ever met (If your experience is limited to school and solo personal projects, how in the world do you develop advanced knowledge of version control? On my personal projects, I rarely need anything more than git add/commit/push/pull and basic branching).

I'm over 10 years older than this guy, but I find myself asking his advice whenever I need to do something advanced or out of the ordinary with Git.

In tech, some people (not you, other people) might need an article titled

What Could I Possibly Learn From a Mentor Twice My Age?

> It was not easy, partly because the software is not intuitive

Damn right. You hear a product is good, you go out and get it, and then you try and use it. Like always you hit a roadblock and you RTFM.

But this time there isn't a manual, no dense text with an index of all the weird and wonderful functions you could master to be an expert.

No this time you only get a string of badly written blog posts, verbose and out of date.

It isn't just technical or process skills.

People are wired differently. I know people who are much younger than I am who are much wiser than I am at the ways of the human animal. I rely on a couple of them to be able to, after a meeting where some strange interpersonal thing happened, simply ask: "what just happened there"?

Everyone has their own personal set of cognitive blind spots and may need assistance for navigating those types of situations. For me, simply learning where my blind spots are, identifying who doesn't have my particular combination of defects (regardless of age), and being able to develop a relationship with them so that I can ask them for navigational assistance does wonders.

>America’s younger workers have already been “personal technology consultants in their own families, so it’s a role they’re very comfortable playing,” she said.

Fuck all of that noise.

I'll teach you how to use something if you really want to learn it, but I'm not going to be the guy you just hand your laptop to and go "Fix it for me I don't know how to do it you're so much better at it than I am."

I like to think of people as having chronological age as well as a [skill] age, with chronological age being largely irrelevant among adults. I'm 41 and my co-founder is 27. He had been programming Java for 7 years when I met him, and now he's a decade in. He has taught me a ton about programming, and I expect the lessons to continue. As a person gets older and specializes, the likelihood that someone younger than them, on a separate path, will have a higher [skill] age increases, which means they need to be increasingly open to learning from chronologically younger people.

My philosophy is that everyone has useful nuggets of information to share, regardless of age, gender, race, etc. Take it all while ya can. Learn from everyone.

Lots. I learn from my kids who are 1/7th of my age all the time. Not so much from the experiences of raising them, but from their insights and observations. A couple of times, their observations about something have blown my mind.

You only have to be open and humble.

Instead of being indignant that we can be "mentored" by a person half our age, let's rephrase the question and ask, "What could I possibly LEARN from a person half my age?"

Well, almost everything. Your typical grandparent was probably taught how to use the new technology of their day by their grand kids. People not half their age, but something like a fifth or even a tenth their age.

I've read about a guy, I think his name is Tao and I'm sure HNers are familiar with him, who got his math PhD at 21 and was teching undergrads while a young teen. Could you be twice his age and learn from him? Is that a trick question?

I think the reason this is even a talking point at all is that the word mentor implies imparting knowledge gained from experience, and since experience correlates to age, we inevitably wonder how a person younger than you could be more experienced than you. But really, the thing we are after is knowledge regardless of how it was acquired. When you look at it like that, the age of your source of knowledge becomes a complete non issue.

Isn't this what is supposed to happen? I mean the whole point of education from the early days is that everyone is collectively standing on the shoulders of the previous generation.

If the idea of accelerating knowledge acquisition - across all domains - is working, then it stands to reason that those with the most plastic brains and access to a wealth of knowledge, as well as tools to figure out what is relevant and contextual, will be able to outperform those who have well worn cognitive paths.

Seems like a great thing to me - but terrifying for anyone who is used to the idea that more time = better.

During my first job out of undergrad, I recall a fairly senior and well respected IT director who didn't use a computer, and didn't read email. He was good at "being strategic" and "delivering for customers". While both of those are great things, I vowed never to become him. The only way to stay vital and connected is to hang out with the young, as well as the old. Just never ever talk pop culture.

My $0.02/anecdote:

Before I became a software engineer, I was a math supplementary instructor at a community college in my hometown. I love teaching, talking about and thinking about math.

Some of my favorite students were the older students that already had preconceived notions about their abilities with math, what things meant or how things fit together.

I discovered those things they brought with them were great vehicles for bending my explanations in such a way that they could understand them.

Eventually this occurred often enough you work a lot of that into how you talk about the subject, and I feel this made me a better/more effective teacher, more often, than I had been before.

Onto the subject, in my new job, one of the other engineers I work closely with is what I would consider non-trivially younger than me. (I'm in my late 20s)

It set me back a smidge to learn that when I did. But in the time I've been here, and that isn't very long, I've learned an incredible amount from him.

I found and this article only confirms that closing yourself off from even a little only hurts the self and is very narrow minded.

Good stuff can come from anywhere.

Well right off the top of my head my first thought was "A different way of looking at things".

People always have a different perspective to offer, regardless of age.

As others have said, a lot! I think this is what keeps many teachers engaged--they learn from their students as well.

On somewhat of a tangent, I have to wonder if Snapchat is an appropriate medium for reporting news...

"My Little Sister Taught Me How To Snapchat Like The Teens"

https://www.buzzfeed.com/benrosen/how-to-snapchat-like-the-t...

How to pretend?

with that attitude... nothing.

The answers appears to be "snapchat" according to the article. So nothing useful then.

Great article showing that in tech, mentoring can go both ways.