The Secret Of Being A Great Mentor

Whenever someone mentions mentoring, I am immediately reminded of this good recollection by Prof.Kirk Martini about his mentor Prof. Randy Pausch

http://people.virginia.edu/~km6e/Papers/pausch-mentor-essay.... [Warning: PDF]

This is just perfect, speaking from the other (lower) side of the fence. In my limited experience as a 'mentee' - I would say the best mentors have clearly articulated what is expected of me, then left me to think my way through.

The worst - even more so than the micro-managing types - are those who make lofty statements like "take initiative", and "be proactive", without much substantiation beyond that. Thus far, these have been the quintessential PHBs.

Slightly related, but hopefully worth mentioning...

If anyone's in the UK and is looking for a mentor to help them with their IT-related entrepreneurial activities, then here's a really good scheme:

  http://www.itcmentoring.com/

It's where my startup found our absolutely wonderful mentor.

How does this compare to advisor-student relationships in grad school?

The idea of mentor/mentee and master/apprentice relationships is way overdue in the software industry. It's good to see an author try to get out what's involved in a good relationship.

I didn't find a lot of new material here and it seemed rambling, but since I'm in the business I'm not much of an impartial judge!

In the future, I'd rather see the top 3 key traits of a mentor instead of the dozen or more items we got. Also why these traits were chosen. It seems one of the qualifications for being a mentor is being able to give lots of options and bullet points. I think the harder part is filtering it out and making it easy for noobs. Just my opinion, though. Thanks for the article!