I am also a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, a UK professional engineering organisation. I hope to be involved with some mentoring through that.
Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
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Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#42I am a world of warcraft raid leader. Started as a WoW raider 10+ years ago.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#43Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#44Do you want to start something in this space?
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#45I suggest going to your alma mater or graduate school and asking them if they have a mentorship program. They almost always do and it's an easy way to get started.
There's a lot of different opportunities for mentorship as you can see from the comments. Find a specific demographic that you're passionate about helping. Maybe it's someone less fortunate, maybe it's a carbon copy of you. After you have that set it will be significantly easier to identify opportunities and organizations through which you can mentor.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#46I wouldn't feel confident to mentor anyone on anything. I'd feel like a total fraud. This can't be uncommon. When I was a developer, I either felt like what I was doing could be done by a smart highschooler (probably better than I was doing it) because it was straight forward, or like I was figuring things out as I went along (because it was hard). Now I do less development and more business analysis / architecture,…
If you've been successful in your career, in spite of what you perceive as personal limitations, I bet you have the humility to be a good listener and an empathetic motivator.
Honestly, if you look at most professional mentors and coaches, especially in sports, they aren't "the best" in their field. They are people who know enough to understand the problems and life experiences people in that field face and are networked in the field and able to help connect folks with each other.
Take a look at the GROW model for a good approach to working with mentees in fields you don't consider yourself to be an expert in.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#47I'm mentoring a deaf student who wants to learn web development. It's been challenging and slow but we are progressing. Most videos/tutorials do not work well because deaf people do not have the same reading comprehension non-deaf people have.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#48Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#49LinkedIn is about to launch Tinder-like mentor matching. There are also two more startups in this field. Do you want to start something in this space?
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#50I've had a number of teaching-type jobs over the years. First, as a martial arts instructor in early college. Then as a math, physics, and programming tutor. I kept up math tutoring after college for a few years, mostly for friends and family still going through university. Also, I've been the technical lead on a number of my work projects, which requires a level of mentorship when juniors are on the team.
But I hadn't done anything in a few years and so a few months ago I tried to heed the call that "the world needs more mentors". I spent a solid month with about a dozen people whom said they wanted a mentor, in the topics specifically covered by my FOSS project. I spent tons of time on writing beginner's documentation, creating a whole series of github issues to gently walk people through getting into the project, started personal conversations with each person to discover their goals and how they wanted to contribute.
They ate up all the "for first timers" tickets where I provided explicit directions on single-line changes to make to the code. They never went on to any of the easy tasks, not ever asked me for any help past the first intro.
Since the advent of "code bootcamps", I've noticed a trend that when people say they need a mentor--especially just after having read some semifamous techie on Twitter say a mentor is essential--they really mean they want a tutor. They want a lesson plan. They want tutorials (notice the root word there?) with step by step instructions. They want someone to give them the answers after trying an exercise or two.
That's not mentorship. That's teaching and it's a difficult, full-time job that should be paid. Mentorship is learning your own path, with an oracle you can bounce ideas off when you get truly stuck. A mentor shouldn't even really have to prepare anything, just be able to point you in the right direction when you have a tough question. Other programmers who know me in person tend to learn I'm productive and will ask me questions from time to time. That is mentorship.
So people who say they need a mentor, or those who say they don't feel qualified to be a mentor, you probably don't know what you're talking about. Mentorship is just using someone else's experience to take shortcuts. If you have any level of experience, you can mentor anyone with less. Hell, it's often not even about that, even. Often it's just being a quiet ear who can ask probing questions.
If it sounds like mentorship isn't that valuable, that's because it isn't. You shouldn't strictly need it, because your entire career will rest on your ability to read and figure things out on your own, so you might as well start now. And you are probably already capable of mentoring, even if you feel like you only just started. Find a good chatroom on your topic and you probably have all the mentorship you need--and have probably already been mentoring other people, if you're active.