Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect As someone else pointed out, this is more commonly referred to as Imposter Syndrome.
> the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is Don't think that is the same as Imposter Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
71–80 of 136 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#72Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#73I hope this is not frowned upon, but I'll hijack this thread to say: I'd love to have a mentor.
After reading very mixed reviews about bootcamps, I've decided to go back to college and get a CS degree. I'm taking one class at a time for now so I can keep my full-time job/pay my mortgage, and boy is that slow-going (especially since my single class right now is circuit design, which is required for the degree but has little to do with software programming).
Anyway, a mentor to help me learn real-world coding skills alongside the degree work would be amazing.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#74I offer to meet random people for coffee several times a week, sometimes it turns out to e networking, sometimes it turns out to be ad-hoc advice/mentoring, I just try to put myself out there for people to use as they'd like and see what happens.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#75LinkedIn 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?
#76I didn't start mentoring anyone until 15 plus years into my career, or so I had thought. After I was first asked to mentor I read up on what it is and realized I'd mentored many people in software since the moment I'd left college. Not all mentoring looks the same but the thing it always has in common is listening, asking questions, listening more then hopefully getting the mentee to listen to themselves. The best book I ever read on mentoring was "Inner Game of Tennis" despite it being intended to teach coaching. I highly recommend it.
I think you can mentor people outside your discipline if you know what questions to ask. It's not always about having a superior technical insight, if it is then it's probably coaching. FWIW I see mentoring as advising someone through personal growth area and coaching as directly training someone on skills improvement or change, the former initiated by the mentee, the later the mentor.
Everyone here is smart and has something to offer. Seek out mentors yourself and in turn mentor others when the chance arises, you'll grow tremendously.
Great question, thanks for asking.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#77I 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,…
That is actually valuable advice. Especially for people who assume everyone else is genius, because they don't know everything yet. It is about figuring stuff out, not about coming in already knowing everything.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#78http://startupweekend.org/interests/Youth
It's a whole weekend of volunteer work, functions just like an adult startup weekend. Kids learn to pitch, come up with ideas, and pivot more times than an adult does (ha!).
I've done a few in different states. Only one wasn't run well (techstars appoints faciliators & organizers, it's up to them on how well the event runs). The others I learned just as much interacting with the kids than they learned from me.
Give it a shot! They don't have many events on that page now, but they have events in quite a few states throughout the year.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#79I offer to meet random people for coffee several times a week, sometimes it turns out to e networking, sometimes it turns out to be ad-hoc advice/mentoring, I just try to put myself out there for people to use as they'd like and see what happens.
Just curious, how do you find random people to meet for coffee? From online communities like HN?
It's definitely not 100% effective but works for what I want at the moment.
Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?
#80But I went. It went really well, and I got a lot of people interested.