List of people offering their time for free to have a "coffee chat" | Hacker News Reader

List of people offering their time for free to have a "coffee chat"

github.com

68 pointsmooreds34 comments

Every time someone I met online has offered to have "a chat over coffee" they somehow never actually had the time for it. Whenever I hear "coffee chat" I just assume they're saying it to reassure themselves they're charitable people or something. Don't you have anything else better to do than to talk to random 20somethings about their career they don't have yet?

I noticed there are a lot of "developer evangelists" etc on here, which are marketing-adjacent roles incentivized for networking... So its hard to have a list of people genuinely interested without ulterior motives

I'll do it if it's convenient and has a fixed end time. So, <10 min walk from either my house or my work, 45min max duration. I often find people who want stuff for free expect me to drive across the entire city to meet them.

I gladly make time for coffee chats, but I only offer it when it suits my schedule. I wouldn't ever put it on my website.

"Ochuko Onojakpor (LinkedIn, Twitter), Technical Writer, CEO at GitHub, RequestMechanic: Software Development, Company Branding, Open-Source, Startups, LLMs, Community Building, Starting in Tech, Auto Care, Job Search, Team Building, Resume, Cats, Coffee, Anything else"

CEO at GitHub?

Looking at the PR, it's not 100% obvious that's how it would render. https://github.com/fharper/coffeechat/pull/43/commits/4f948b.... The intent might be "CEO at RequestMechanic, Technical Writer at GitHub".

On the other hand, if he did realize that this innocuous looking json update would render as CEO of GitHub, I'm not sure I hate it. I think people offering their time to chat with others is great, but I'm not a fan of this type of aggregation. If this makes it look sillier, maybe that's ok?

If someone doesn't know when to use an array, I don't want to talk to them anyway!

Yeah, don't think its malicious...but man I was confused when I read that thing.

How it renders may need to be rethought...

I love that folks are doing this.

As a senior dev I’d love to mentor, but my imposter syndrome tells me that I don’t have anything meaningful to share because all my success has been a fluke

Don't worry, some of the people on this list probably have nothing meaningful to share.

e.g. a university student (2025 grad) who is working part time is in this list.

To be fair, I clicked into the list and maybe I’m being naive but the first person I clicked on mentioned that they’d be happy to talk to someone about anything from mentoring to Star Trek episodes, so I think it’s kind.

There could very well be someone out there that’s otherwise isolated (maybe in a new city) and just hanging out with other company at the right moment makes a big difference in their life.

Also it’s odd to me to suggest that a university student has nothing useful to share. If you’re a first-year student that’s struggling, another student who’s familiar with what that’s like in 2024 could be exactly who you need to speak to.

I think everyone has something to "offer".

https://humanlibrary.org/

Don’t think about it as mentoring, just chat and compare notes about your work. You’ll help each other out.

i am in a similar situation, but i find that the most help people need is to sound off their problems and get someone to look at them from a different perspective. you are not giving them directions, you are just pointing out things they may not have considered. usually the people already made a choice or have an answer, but they need someone to confirm that it's a good one.

when you are alone facing a problem, sometimes it is difficult to sort through it all, and then it helps to have a second person to confirm things, or help you step through the problem with a fresh mind until the right solution becomes self evident

in summary, you are not sharing your knowledge but your experience and the wisdom that you have acquired over the years. and a lot of that is not specific to your career but simply a factor of being older/ having worked longer. in theory any 50 year old could be a mentor to any 30 year old. we just seek out people with a similar background because it is more likely that we understand each other.

Have you helped your coworkers before? Then you got what it takes to get started.

Staying humble about working hard and what comes from it is probably still meaningful to share

Funny enough, the handful I clicked through being prominently displayed on the Readme all had their Calendlys booked solid. One even made their Calendly private.

Whoops :-)

This is a really great way to advance your career.

You, as the “mentor” will learn a lot. Some people you meet will advocate for you in career opportunities, it’s practice for interviewing, it broadens your exposure to problems in your space so you’re not just in an echo chamber of your own company’s problems.

https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2023/09/12/take-call-help-rand...

Some of these folks are definitely not qualified to mentor anyone.

I kinda agree, but also not. I've found that the best mentors in my life have been people that are just a few steps ahead of me. The industry changes so fast these days that what someone did 30, or even 5 years ago, might not be applicable to what you need to do now.

Knowing the difference between coaching and mentoring one key key

> Some of these folks are definitely not qualified to mentor anyone.

Want to back that up with something?

I got contacted through Linkedin by a student at the university I graduated from that asked if I could do a video call to give them career advice. I agreed and did the call, and within a couple days got a half dozen more requests through Linkedin. Had to start ignoring them.

LinkedIn may be trying to initiate some of these connections

I'm reminded of a recent HN conversation about alphabetical order name bias...

I'd love for the list to contain location information, something like the country or general area. I feel like I have a lot to learn from a good mentor but it's hard to find then

i hate "coffees" disguise as job interviews. i find it dishonest. is that common or just a thing that happens in the birmingham, alabama tech community?

What's the point? I really wanted to meet one guy I met on X so I did it.

Unrelated, never understood why people say "free as in beer", beer is the opposite of free! I think it'd be more accurate to say free as in water or free as in air.

The full phrase is, “Free as in speech, not as in beer.” It applies to software, especially 20+ years ago when FOSS software was coming into public view and people needed to understand what it was.

Some people would say “open source software,” but this struck others as a half-measure. The visibility of the source wasn’t the point, they would say. What matters is the freedom to do what you want with the software — https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

If someone says “this beer is free” it means you’re charged nothing for it. If someone says “this software is free” it means (in this context) that you have an inalienable right to use it as you please — like you have an inalienable right to speak freely.

> Free as in speech

When did they change this? I distinctly remember this previously being “free as in freedom, not as in beer.”

It’s always had to be further disambiguated by using “libre” and “gratis” — not sure “as in free speech” is better.

Update: welp, I must be misremembering. Wayback machine shows at least since 2010… so it’s either a reallly old framing or, I’m misremembering, completely!

The point of free as in beer is that it’s not free. So, if someone is giving it to you, it’s gratis.

As opposed to “free, as in freedom” to use the beer not just for drinking, but to redistribute, inspect, add ingredients to it, understand how it was made, etc.

> As opposed to “free, as in freedom” to use the beer not just for drinking, but to redistribute, inspect, add ingredients to it, understand how it was made, etc.

That's not what freedom means!

Free beer has a cost, but not for you. It's an incentive for you to socialize.

That's more accurate.

On the opposite extreme there's "free as in vacation" such as high pressure sales tactics for a timeshare. :p

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