Show HN: Merit – Career mentorship for tech workers | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Merit – Career mentorship for tech workers

get-merit.com

49 pointsrbrown6 comments

Hello Hacker News!

I built a free service where you can schedule 1:1 video mentorship calls with senior ICs and managers in software engineering, product management, and design. The goal is to remove barriers to building a professional network that can help you grow your career like building skills and getting referrals. Right now we’re limited to folks living or working in the US or Canada, but we’re working on expanding beyond that one day.

Without logging in, you can browse mentors here: https://www.get-merit.com/mentors

Between tech layoffs, hybrid work, and an uncertain industry outlook, I hope this can be a useful resource for you or someone you know, especially if you do not have a large professional network.

I would love to hear your feedback!

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My co-founder @k3fernan and I made this because we believe that mentorship is the most effective way to build your network and career. Over 5,000 people have used Merit for nearly 10,000 mentorship hours.

I previously built a diversity recruiting platform and saw many people leave promising jobs and opportunities because they didn’t know where to go next and didn’t have the support system to help guide them.

We’ve seen people use Merit to navigate job searches, promotions, career switches, and learning skills. The mentors are using Merit to improve their own skills by teaching others, broaden and diversify their own network, and give back to tech at large.

Mentors choose specific topics and times to talk, which keeps conversations focused and easy to schedule. This blog post details the settings we’ve implemented to set up mentor calendars: https://blog.get-merit.com/simplify-mentorship-with-a-merit-...

I’ll be watching this thread for the next 24 hours to respond to any questions, comments, or feedback you may have.

Thank you!

"We work best for users in US, Canada" - thanks for the location gate.

Great idea, especially given the circumstances around tech layoffs right now, a lot of great talents are in need of real opportunities and guidance.

Thanks for kind words - really appreciate it!

Interesting product. What's "in it" for the mentors? The seem to be an integral part of your value prop.

Great question! The mentors get a lot of real experience and broaden their network in a way that directly improves their current jobs and future job prospects. So far, mentors use Merit to:

- Learn or improve their people skills by helping people with real problems and challenges - Diversify their own network beyond folks at their job and existing referrals - Learn about real people and problems beyond their own

Many of our mentors are senior individual contributors, who are interested in exploring management in a lightweight manner, or early managers who are looking to meet more folks and learn about more real-world scenarios. The experience of mentoring others directly helps them learn these skills and apply them to their real life.

Hopefully this answers your question!

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