Hacker News Reader

Comment by madeuptempacct | Hacker News Reader

Give me an example. I have literally never had anyone show me anything unless I demonstrated proficiency on par with their own and they felt the need to impress me. That, or paying them lots and lots of money for personal lessons, which generally tend to be crap anyway.

I am baffled by the amount of people who espouse mentorship like it's actually a thing.

View on HN

So, part of getting advice depends upon seeming to be the kind of person worth sharing with.

This can be competency in a different discipline, or being young and full of potential, or being personally interesting, etc.

In my experience experts will routinely and freely share their knowledge. People love talking about themselves.

If this has basically never happened to you, it's worth some self-examination. Do you make friends easily? Do you manage relationships well? Do you often find yourself in arguments? Do you have some recognized expertise or usefulness in some area?

There are many hints in your language. The "tend to be crap" anyways is a tell that you might have a sour attitude on life that turns people away. The "baffled by" indicates a lack of empathy and low ability to examine why your situation may differ from theirs. "Give me an example" is demanding. "Felt the need to impress me" views others' motives in a mercenary and petty way.

You're free to ignore this. But, consider that if you figure out why people aren't mentoring you specifically, it may also solve a bunch of related issues caused by a common thread.

(The thoughts above are based on little data, so don't take any of them personally if they're off base. The one big data point is never receiving advice - that is a sign of a problem. And, since you did want an example, when I entered business I cold emailed someone in my field how they did online work. They gave me a detailed and helpful answer, and we later became business partners. I have many stories like that.)

There's always the possibility that things are different in their country.

It seems to me that is less likely. Certainly there would be some unusual situations where people are unfairly oppressed to a point where they cannot take advantage of this, BUT for the most part... people are people.

As a sister posts echos, finding a mentor can be a blue moon event. I looked for one my whole career, I've had 2 over the last 10+ years. The first was the lead sysadmin I was working under at my first datacenter job. We always joked that he's the sort you keep far away from customers, but he also had hands down the broadest and deepest knowledge base of any sysop I've ever worked with, as well as 0 hesitance to dive as deep as needed (patches to ZFS/The kernel? sure.) to fix whatever was going on. My second is a dev lead on my current team. The mentorship is less "official" and more than I've learned more in the last 2 years than in the 4 prior, simply because of the massive amount of experience/best practices he's figured out that I was slowly learning via trial by fire.

In both cases, it was largely a factor of WHY I chose to work there, to work with someone who blew me away this much. That's the one type of mentorship I've found to "work for me," and while it's perhaps not what you're looking for/what is often trumpeted, (e.g. we never had a "formal mentor relationship") they've certainly boosted me into a far better all around engineer than I would have ever become on my own.

Mentorship?

Da Vinci wasn't looking for mentorship from Messer Fazio, Brera Friar, Giannino the Bombardier, Benedetto Potinari, Maestro Antonio, master of hydraulics or Maestro Giovanni Francese.

For each one he had a very specific topic on which he wanted to download their expertise: "how to repair a lock, canal and mill in the Lombard manner", "the means by which the tower of Ferrara is walled without loopholes" etc

That's what I've seen in practice. Find the expert. Be respectful of their time. Be specific. Do the same when it's your turn.

I've had a mentor in my life.

Starting out as a software engineer, I showed more interest in the product lifecycle and production behavior, I caught the attention of the tech lead.

What followed were two years of discussions, insights, actions and results that have stayed with me ever since. I grew more as a software engineer and as an... employee, than I did in any period of my life. Ever since I left that company, I have yet to find another person willing to share so much and to discuss topics at length.

I miss having a mentor.

Try mentoring someone yourself, now that you have some knowledge to share (presumably). You will probably enjoy the relationship just as much as the original one.

Of course I am more than willing to share any knowledge I might have and do it with every person in my team that might want to discuss anything. Uunfortunately, I don't feel at the same level of insight as my mentor. Maybe one day.

People like that I find are less good than they think they are. Personally i've found people who are really great at things are more than willing to help someone learn if they're interested, try and capable of learning. I've had more than a few people help me in life like that, sometimes, from what I could tell, with no real benefits to themselves.

I've tried to be like that with people i've helped learn and you really do get a good feeling seeing someone improving at something because of skills you taught them and for me personally, I find teaching others helps cement knowledge in your own mind and helps give you some concious practice at things you have likely been doing by muscle memory for a while.

My co-worker. He is a fantastic database guy. Super willing to share. I lucked out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com