So how does one go about finding mentors when you do not work closely with them? Is there a better strategy than simply reaching out on email/linkedin and hope for the best?
I go up to them, and I ask them.
And they usually like to spend any amount of time explaining, if they see that you're someone who might be able to understand the answer. And that's to a large degree just attitude. People are usually really happy to talk about things they know a lot about, not just to sound smart, but because they really like to think about it, and you get to think about it when you hear yourself talking... I really enjoy ranting, and listening to rants. I learned a lot of CS by listening to hour-long rants at the cafeteria. Some nerdy person just piping their /dev/urandom into your visual cortex.
Knowing what to want to know seems much harder.
>> Knowing what to want to know seems much harder.
This is so true. I do want to work mostly on distributed systems but every once in a while I get AI envy seeing all the amazing progress being made in the field.
If you email ten, at least five will probably ignore you, three will say they're too busy, but two might be up for a chat. You lose nothing by asking, and if someone's "offended" or something because they received a cold email... well, that's their problem.
That's the start of a mentoring relationship. The first two probably won't be good AI mentors but you'll have learned something cool, and maybe they're curious about distributed systems. But maybe the second or third or fourth time you repeat this process, you find someone you really click with.
I've been on the receiving end of those emails a small handful of times due to a previous job, and I've been thrilled to receive them every time. While none of them turned into a longer-term relationship, I would have been happy if they had. I think in general, (non-famous) people are less busy than people assume and would love to talk about things they're passionate about. Don't track down the project lead; instead go talk to the anonymous people a step or two down the ladder.
I swear fully half the really useful/interesting things I've learned have started with someone just infodumping on me IRL at some event.
This is truly the most important question and one that only you can answer for yourself, unfortunately.
I strongly believe this is entirely what is necessary for the average person to be a good hacker. Put in effort to understand. The rest often comes naturally.
How do you find them to go up to them though?
Not sarcasm, genuine question. How do you find someone who a) you respect and could teach you things you're interested in, and b) has time for you.
I tried trawling through LinkedIn "to expand my network" but that's useless.
I tried attending meetups, that's only slightly less useless. Lots of cool people, no mentors though.
At work, it seems the people who could be a mentor are more senior and everyone wants them as the mentor.
And people who're on the same level often consider you as competition and it takes a lot of work to establish enough trust for truly candid communication.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm sort of mid-career now, and I just feel I have missed out on mentors outside of my very first job. I'm worried about it in general because I feel inadequate to mentor others.
I've wanted a mentor for at least 7 years now, and I didn't find one.
If you're mid-career, you're probably perfect as a mentor for someone.
The question I have for a mentor is "how do I get to the next step?" -- and a person who is either on that step or recently left it would know. Or someone way more ahead who's introspective and remembers well -- but I'm okay with less.
I was never a better classroom teacher than on my 2nd year of university.
Everything was fresh to me, including why people don't get things the first time, because I'd only recently not got it the first time.
I keep them around.
They're like rare pokemons.
Some meetup groups are better than others.
Getting mentorship through work: There are two ways I can think of. 1) Pick a job so that you specifically end up working with/under the person you wish as your mentor. There's simply no way around getting it, because you'll just suck up whatever ideas and opinions they have. 2) If your workplace has a "guild" where the obsessed can meet; this is, in my sample size = 1 experience, most often done half-assed.
It's not mentoring per se, but the list of people I speak with ranges from CS students asking for advice regarding their career to industry veterans. Sometimes we talk only once, but some of these relationships have lasted for more than a year so far. The latter are rare, still fairly casual.
I'm in the same boat as you, but I'm trying to focus a bit more on the product/business side of things. I've been mentoring engineers for 10+ years (and introduced the practice to several orgs). The irony is that I've ben struggling with finding a mentor for myself. The impromptu way seems to work better.
Also I second the comment made my sshine: "I go up to them, and I ask them." I sometimes reach out to people in my area just to learn about their work. We generally meet in person. This has been a bit harder since I left London, where it's hard to avoid interactions that are _not_ networking. But it's still doable even in my current location.
I randomly found one in his only appearance at a ruby meetup, giving a presentation that changed my life, opened me to the community where I met a now dear friend who also became my mentor.
I wish I had a suggestion, it seems like it just happened randomly, even though I was searching for ages.
This is an under-appreciated cost of working at startups. It's fun to be the big fish in the pond, but it means that you have less access to resources for this sort of thing.
You've identified something that you think is high value to you, and should reasonably be supplied by your employer as part of your job -- access to a mentor. This is something to consider when looking at jobs.
I work at a bigcorp and have had great mentors, and now that I'm an old fart, I try my best to mentor others. It's a huge plus to have access to a large community of talented engineers
I totally get what you’re saying though. It can be a situation of the blind leading the blind.
Startups don't have to comprise merely junior employees. Sure, the senior employees rarely have a skill-for-skill match to your profile. Startups can't afford that kind of redundancy.
But, any competent startup should have a good balance of senior 'ship steerers & NO men' alongside dynamic starry eyed juniors. For product & work-life mentorship, you don't need a technical peer as your mentor. So any senior leader in your startup will do.
For technical mentorship, I do think it is a bad idea to join a startup as your first company. Kind of leaves you without reference. Some avenues for technical mentorship that have worked for people around me are:
1. Universities sometimes have alumni mentorship programs
2. If you worked in a lab in undergrad, your professor or his ex-PhDs are great references
3. Friend of a friend, friend of family. 2 degrees of separation casts a wide net that often catches 1 person who is a good match.
4. If you can find a good technical mentor who just doesn't have enough time, then getting access to their wikis or favorite blogs also works. Sometimes the hardest part is understanding workflows and curating the right information. If someone has already laid it out for you to read, then it's about separating the wheat from the chaff.
A lot of people will gladly help but don't do it because most people in general react badly to unsolicited advice. I have been trying to help people in the past but I wised up and now I am only offering help if they ask for it.
It's about someone with wisdom knowing your particular context and guiding and dialoguing on questions like
- should I learn this tool/lang/framework
- is this general approach feasible for my problem?
- I'm thinking of accepting a job at $corp, am I missing a blindspot based on culture or some other factor
1. Meet people smarter than you, could be through meetups or discord etc. The more people you meet, the higher chance of someone you'd meet someone you'd want as a mentor
2. Being active as a mentee. Most people love mentoring but it's a two way street. If you don't make yourself available to be mentored you waste everyone's time
3. Show initiative as a mentee. Ask good questions and problems your solving related to your mentors expertise
Having had a lot of great amazing mentors in my life, and mentored just as many.
In my experience if you don't put yourself out there to be mentored you won't get anywhere. Most of my mentors have been through city slack channels, work, and meetup. Alot of my original mentors actually ask me advice having seen my career progression over time
I've had people ask me to mentor them but they expected me to magically transfer all my knowledge to them, suffice to say I didn't waste any time with them . When I found an amazing mentee I went out of my way to help them, and I got to see their progress and growth overtime. That was super rewarding
Filtering for people who are: - good engineers - enjoy helping people - are good at helping people - have the time to help people - are mature enough to appreciate the self development value of mentoring someone else (its a great way to discover ones own weaknesses)
Leaves you with a very small pool of people. My advice is to consider people in areas that might not fit your mental image of what a mentor looks like, so someone younger than you for example.
That has been my approach so far but it feels like that we've sort of taught each other most of what our individual strengths were.
In your career there are periods of reaping and sowing, in various ways. In terms of mentorship, you are reaping when you are surrounded by people more senior than you, and you are sowing when you are the most senior one.
My experience has mainly been in top companies where there were always more senior people to learn from. Then I did a 2 year startup stint and had nobody to learn from (but had plenty to teach)
I think you are seeing this dynamic. Your best opportunity for mentorship is at work and you are recognizing that startup life doesn't give you that. If you are craving growth / mentorship, it may be a signal to look for a situation (big company) that can readily give you that to reap. After a few years, you can go back to sowing in startups at a higher level.
Almost every great mentor I've found was through work. Teammates that I would gravitate towards, usually because I was stumped on something.
Eventually they'd have something for me; then we have this sort of paired-mentoring thing going
A suitable stand-in would be open source projects for things you're interested in. For me, it's been Ansible -- particularly roles (reusable tasks) for it.
Get your hands dirty with something. The important part in finding a good mentor is being teachable
Tell 'them' (rather often a vague audience) what you're trying to do, how you're going about it, and how it's different from what you expect.
If things are presented well I've found people are usually eager to help
I don't have a mentor. I was thinking about it, but for me being active on websites connected with my lifestyle and following their valuable people in my topics: startups, technology, and building a successful business became a great way to improve every day.
For me these sites are Twitter, IndieHackers, HackerNews, ProductHunt, BetaList. I find there is so much precious content, better than reading some old blog posts or forums.
I can live day by day, following their ups and downs. I can actively comment on their work and ask questions. That's a hidden mentoring for me.
Search one with experienced engineers then (?).
If you don't contemplate a change of workplace then I guess you shouldn't depend on people. Read books extensively, try to apply, see what works and what doesn't.
That is the plan but that's a much slower process because of vesting, intertia etc.
Regardless of how you find the mentor, the key is to make sure the relationship is a good match. It's easy to get caught up trying to work with the "smartest" person. But, you want a mentor you can feel at ease with.
I'm being serious though is the non-obvious part, I'm not making a quip. A mentor to me is someone who isn't teaching me "how" or even teaching me "why", they are teaching me "hmm"
I'm in my mid 40s and I try to remain receptive that a me from 20 years ago is looking for me now, and try to pay backwards what I couldn't steal forwards
You can find and discover mentors, and vet them via their profile or their LinkedIn (if linked). Normally you get a free session as well to get to know them.
I've mentored on there quite a bit and I think its a great platform.
Website: https://mentorcruise.com
My mentoring link: https://mentorcruise.com/mentor/jackgardner/
For example, here is the information for my home state of Indiana:
[1] https://www.in.gov/pla/professions/engineering-home/engineer...
Relationships are a trade. Mentorship is a trade of guidance for volunteership.
- Go to other teams and build relationships and ask for mentorship.
- It's your team's more senior members explicit responsibility to mentor you.
- Ask your company what they offer for training and mentoring.
- I _think_ some people charge $0 on mentorcruise.com.
Not having technical mentors really hold me back from getting the staff/principal level so as a manager now (one reason I switched but not the main one) I push hard for to enable mentoring for my teams and the org. Push hard to find one.
Have something to offer, be genuinely interested and it will happen. Don't be afraid to ask.
I'm going to assume you don't have people on your team / in your organization you can learn from.
In short, I'd:
1. Make something that reflects the things that I'm curious to learn
2. Then ask specific people for specific advice about the thing I've made.
That being said I don't regret anything at all.
If you're looking for someone to trade notes I'd happy to hop on a call and see where it goes.
Many YC founders have used them before. It works because all of their mentors/coaches have built 7-8 figure businesses themselves.
feel free to use my referral links to signup https://adplist.org/invite/111309
reaching out to targeted people (eg. engineer working in your domain interest) in HN community also works :)
Not all results match
For others reading, this is a Ask HN on the same topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9400288
No worries. I tried to only add more content :-)
I have had multiple good mentors in my career (both student and work) and I have been an attentive mentor to three people in my life.
Your mentors choose you, and it is wrong to think of mentors as ideas/advice machine. Mentors mingle with you depending on your personality, taste, potential, current level, etc.
Be yourself. Put yourself in situations and locations where you are more likely to cross paths with potential mentors. Communicate with people more. If you are eyeing someone specific, let them know of your existence, interests. And ask them advice on something specific. Keep the connection if the other party is willing.
Mentorship relations that form and evolve naturally are the best ones.
And mentorship relations are not one-size fits all. Some mentors are more attentive and more engaging than others. Some relations last for life, some for months. No kind is inherently better than the other.
tl;dr: be in places together with interesting people (fully online forums count, too). Ask for advice. Keep the connection. Let a relation form automatically.
Our mentors are mostly in the data science world, but many are senior software engineers.
Most of our mentees are 1st time job seekers (who appreciate our ISA model), but we did just launch more flexible payment options (e.g. pay by the hour) for folks like you!
Though you do have to pay, mentorships on SM often result in long-term relationships
Disclaimer: I run the company