Ask HN: Find a technical mentor
I'm a technical person by nature, and work as a software engineer as my job. My expertise is on the lower- level side of things, mainly involving operating systems. While I have plenty of "mentorship" day-to-day from people I respect and admire, on my personal projects (or projects I hope to turn into ventures), which have nothing to do with what I do for my employer, I feel I'm lacking.
I'll give an example to illustrate. A few months back I wrote a small project in django, because I was curious about server-side development, and wanted to try django out. It worked out fairly well, and I have no problem figuring out how to get what I want done for the most part. But I always have this nagging feeling that I could do it better, that there is a better way. Now, I'll happily concede that practice makes perfect, and I do more web development, I'll get better at it and figure out the better way. But I feel that by having a mentor I can expand my horizons and learn from someone else's experience, which I think is invaluable.
In the above example, I would talk to my mentor about how it's best to model the functionality in the database, and best ways to implement some functionality, etc. I would do all the coding, they would be a "wise and experienced sounding board".
Basically, I don't see "learning by doing" and "learning through mentorship" to be mutually exclusive, and both can happen at the same time.
So what am I looking for? Someone whose technical skills are complementary to my own (mainly looking for people with python/django experience and iphone/objc experience, the areas I'm trying to grow in), and who is willing to be the "wise and experienced sounding board".
My question to HN is two-fold: a. What's a good way to find such a person? The problem is that most of my technical friends/coworkers have a skill set very similar to my own (or in areas which are not that interesting to me). So I have to look outside my usual circle, hence asking for advice of where to look. b. If there happens to be anyone reading this who is interested, that would be great too :)
A fair question that I feel may come up is what does the mentor get in return. I don't have a good answer, which is why I've been mulling for a few days whether to post this or not. The short answer is "not much", beyond the satisfaction of seeing someone grow and having a willing student (things I've enjoyed very much when I'm on the other side of the mentor/mentee relationship), as well as a friend. And obviously, if there is something that's reasonable to do in return, I'm always open to suggestions.
Thanks in advance, and looking forward to your thoughts!