Ask HN: How to Find a Mentor

[pedrolins]

Hey everyone

I've heard countless times through posts or videos about advice for programmers. One of the most frequent advice is to find a mentor, preferrably someone you look up to that can help you in getting better at your skills by evaluating your work and giving you advice based on his/hers experience throughout your career.

I'm from a small town with not that many people who I'm able to relate to and it seems that the internet is a good solution for my problem

My question is how do I develop such a relationship with a person through the internet without being pedantic or straight up rude?

Would love to hear your advice and experience

Thanks

[chingv]

Start with an easy ask.

I got this question in a class I taught last week. Here's the advice and tips that resonated with the group:

- Don't start by asking "Will you be my mentor?" or "Can you review my skills and give me feedback?" It's a big investment of time and effort, if they don't know you.

- Instead, ask one or two thoughtful questions related to their expertise. Many people are happy to help, especially if it only takes 10 minutes of their time.

- If they don't respond, don't let that discourage you. Sometimes it's a numbers game: reach out to enough people and you'll find a connection.

- How to reach out the first time? There's a lot of ways you can try. Comment on an article they wrote, or email them about it. Engage them on a thread here on HN. Reply to them on Twitter. Attend an online event where people are speaking about the topics you're interested in.

- Most importantly, follow up. After they respond or you get to talk to them, send a thank-you summarizing what you learned and what was most helpful for you.

- Better yet, send another thank-you a month later with how their advice helped you: what did you do with it, and what was the result? People love to hear how their advice helped. You'll stand out from the crowd and they're more likely to continue engaging with you... and that's how the longer-term relationship can get started.

If you find this advice helpful - I'd love for you to reply here and let me know what worked for you!

[pjettter]

I wish I'd had a mentor ever since I was a teenager (80's).

The reason I answer is because I just had an idea. This doesn't help you, personally, right now, I suppose.

Google had a 10% rule (not sure if they still do) where 10% of the time, an employee could spend time on personal projects.

What if a company said, 10% of the time, you mentor. Those who seek a mentor can just apply to the company and get in line and wait.

Possibly, these mentored people could be future hires, and the employees are improving their abilities/knowledge by having a "teacher" role.

If I was Google's or any company's CEO, I would try this!

[legerdemain]

I haven't seen anything exactly like your suggestion, but every company I've worked for (from 400 to 40,000 people) had an internal mentoring program that would set up early-career people with more senior people. I've never heard anyone say they tried it and found it useful. Every company I've worked for also practiced a culture of discreet secrecy around every topic a mentee could conceivably want to know about: compensation, performance evaluations, where you, your boss, and your team stand within the company, etc.

It's sad, but gossip is ever-present at companies because it is the best and most informative kind of mentorship. Far from accurate or reliable, but still the best among a field of bad candidates.

[codegeek]

Funny I have been thinking about this a lot lately as a small company CEO who is looking for hungry people who want to learn. I might just start this if I can get my lazy butt to do a bit more outside of the business. If you think about it, it could be a win win for both parties. I get to mentor people and whoever seems to be the person I would like to hire, I hire them (unless of course they go to another employer :)).

[legerdemain]

I've heard the same advice just as many times. I have been forced to conclude that the people who are giving this advice either don't know what they're talking about, or they're thinking of a very specific connection they have with someone that is impossible to replicate on command.

I'm a mid-career dev with about a decade and a half of experience, and I have failed at mentorship from both directions.

I have failed at being an effective mentor. I have reached out multiple times to less experienced people who say they're looking for a mentor on various forums. What I offer: my first-hand experience working in Silicon Valley; realities of the industry; tech stacks that are actually in use at various companies; interview prep or advice for self-study; interviewing experiences I've had and what I've found to work, as interviewer and interviewee.

After a couple rounds of email or video calls, the prospective mentee loses interest and we let the conversation die. I get a gnawing feeling that they were looking for a job hookup. Maybe I just suck as a source of value?

I have also failed at finding an effective mentor. I could really use someone who is on a path similar to mine, but 5-10 years ahead. I'd love to get some relatable, trustworthy advice about career trajectory, picking the right company to work for, how to know when a team or project is right for you, and what to do about it, what to specialize in and how, what to do about continuing education, etc.

What I usually find instead is aggrieved people who just want someone to listen to their tale of woe, or (slightly better, but still not good enough) people who are further in their careers, but a bad personality match. For example, they might offer advice about how to find jobs where you do as little work as possible while your boss ignores you, or people who want to get out of tech and flip houses or something.

[btkramer9]

Hey there! If you would like to give it another shot I would love to have a mentor. I'm not looking for a job or interview help. I'm looking for genuine conversation about experiences and advice from a more senior dev, tech stacks and general lifestyle of a developer. I've even have a fun pet project if we wanted to pair program and do something more technical. I've been a developer of 6 years myself.

Perhaps we may not end up clicking but it doesn't hurt to try! My email is my username at gmail.com

[jseliger]

https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-pr...

[nigel_bree]

I love this article, and have recommended it many times in discussion with young people learning programming in other forums (although it's rare for them to come back to me to say they'd read it, so...). There are some small differences in the social dynamics when it comes to mentoring in the workplace, but the vast majority of this is still incredibly on point. Thanks so much for writing it.

[joshxyz]

Covered on "Seeking Out Mentors" and "Finding the Correct Mentor" parts here: https://wallstreetplayboys.com/how-to-win/

Also here: https://wallstreetplayboys.com/find-a-mentor/

Personally from my experience it's a lot of doing your own research first, then making your own attempts, then asking for feedback in a way that isn't borderline creepy / disturbing / time-wasting (as covered in above refs)

[Moody_10001]

I would suggest that social media would be great especially through publicly available platforms like Twitter, or professional centric platforms like LinkedIn. With keyword searches, you'll be able to find professionals that match your criteria, and by monitoring followers and engagement level, you can determine a person's reputation and willingness to talk with others. Never lead with an outright request, however get to know your hoped-for mentor first; and, if you can, offer something of value to begin the relationship.

[Moody_10001]

I second this. Look for facebook groups, online forums, or subreddits where you can interact with experienced programmers. There are many articles written about all these different places.

[stephen82]

I was looking for a mentor for years and eventually I settle down by mentoring my own self if that making any sense lol.

How I did it? Well, I built this mental model that goes like this:

    1. If a task is difficult, simplify it by splitting it to smaller tasks. Sort them in ascending order of ease.
    2. Start questioning the "how"s on your smaller tasks and do your research to find multiple solutions, suggestions for improvement, optimizations, potential rewrites before becoming a bottleneck that would demand a major refactoring.
    3. See whether you have answered your "how"s from #2 or not. If not, go to #1.
    4. Based on #2, find the best material possible other experts in that field suggest or highly recommend; try not to fall in commercial traps or biased reviews. There are lots of valuable resource on such topic, and trust me GitHub has incredible content in markdown format with ultra-advanced levels of explanations.
    5. Narrow down your expertise in a specific tool set, be it languages or IDEs / editors of your choice and learn them inside out as much as you can. E.g.: you want to master your craft around web development; fair enough. Learn JavaScript in depth and use the framework your current job demands you to know. Go to #1, then to #4, and then #3.
    6. Start writing a blog or an ebook. Guess what; after a certain amount of time, you have just become yourself the mentor you have always wanted.

At least that was my own experience so far ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

It does not mean I'm a success though :D I'm a living failure, that's why I always push myself to become better at what I do.

I'm an eternal student!

[legerdemain]

I guess another take on how to find a mentor is, be active, be interesting, and be accomplished. In short, be worth supporting.

At university, many faculty are glad to interact with students who are curious, successful, and proactive. People will advocate for you if you clearly show potential.

Out of school, it's not as clear how to do this in every job. If you join a community and offer obvious value, senior members might try to help you out with advice.

But I've seen this work out much more with "frivolous" communities, like niche programming languages, or 3D graphics hobbyists, or Code for America type stuff. Not a lot of excitement around people who work in enterprisey jobs on enterprisey things.

The one exception to that I've found has been SREs, who, as a community, seem both tight-knit and nerdily excited about enterprisey things most devs find extremely dull.

[Chyzwar]

Some big companies have structured programs for mentorship. In most cases these programs are targeting graduates.

Maybe by contributing in Open Source. If you find a project you are interested and start doing contribution there is a chance that maintainers would mentor you.

Senior Developer time is highly constrained, we have families, demanding jobs, side projects and still need time to learn new stuff. Mentoring random people on the internet do not look attractive.

The sad truth about programming is that you need to spend a lot of time in front of a computer, usually struggling and alone.

[TRC_0FF]

Previous discussion from 2019: Ask HN: How can I find a good mentor?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20032031

[russ_poll]

It can very awkward! Try and find some folks online you can engage with and build a bit of a relationship first. Comment on their articles, tweets, or projects. If you reach out, reference specific things they've done that you are interested in and want to learn more about.

Part of what we're working on at SharpestMinds is reducing the friction to finding a mentor—https://www.sharpestminds.com/

We are currently focused on Data science mentorships, but we plan on expanding into the broader software space in the medium-term.

[littleninja]

Coding Coach [1] makes this simple: folks who want to be a mentor have posted their contact details, you reach out and see if it’s a match. Do read their mentorship guidelines [2].

[1] https://mentors.codingcoach.io/ [2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zKCxmIh0Sd4aWLiQncICOGm6...

[formalsystem]

Hamel Husain (A staff software engineer at Github) an excellent engineer talks about how he got Jeremy Howard (fast.ai creator) to mentor him https://twitter.com/HamelHusain/status/1349804023365345280?s...

I think his technique is by far the most reliable way in the internet age. Give, give, give, people will like you

[closed]

I volunteer as co-director for an organization called Code for Philly. We help set up collaborations between tech volunteers and other non-profits.

One thing I've noticed is that bootcamp grads consistently putting in time on projects often get a ton of feedback / mentorship.

CfP is part of a network called Code for America, and with covid a lot of projects are meeting virtually, so I'd look for the nearest "Code for" group! (Or similar communities).

[mattm]

I'm a mentor on CodePath.org - https://codepath.chronus.com/

I've only had one mentee so far but it worked out pretty well. Maybe sign up and reach out to a few mentors on there that are doing work that would be aligned with what you're looking for.

[titusblair]

Might want to check out https://mentorcloud.com