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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?

#121

Post by erbdex »

fellellor wrote: post #67
erbdex wrote: post #28

1. India has 10K AICTE approved engineering colleges. While some of these are IITs and NITs that you might've heard of, beyond the top 50-100 colleges, there is _no support system_ for the students. The curriculum of most state universities still updates in 5 years with little autonomy given to colleges. As a result, most students still see Java, C and dotNet as the universe of CS. 2. India's gender inequality in the…

You're doing an important thing. Rather than just working with students, also reach out to experienced people in the industry. Even in a city like Bangalore, I feel the industry is too disconnected from the colleges.

We do. Come do an AMA for us next week. Tomorrow's is by a senior from the college who cracked GATE, went to IIT-D and is now working with Visa in Bangalore. EMail me.

Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?

#122

Post by erbdex »

SOlItIcKlANstIs wrote: post #110
erbdex wrote: post #28

1. India has 10K AICTE approved engineering colleges. While some of these are IITs and NITs that you might've heard of, beyond the top 50-100 colleges, there is _no support system_ for the students. The curriculum of most state universities still updates in 5 years with little autonomy given to colleges. As a result, most students still see Java, C and dotNet as the universe of CS. 2. India's gender inequality in the…

Would love to help. How can I get involved ?

Let's connect on mail. Check profile.

Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?

#123

Post by throwaway4569 »

c4n4rd wrote: post #31
value wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, man. Same here

PM me and let me know how I can help. We can set up an initial set of emails. 1. What you currently do 2. What you would like to be doing/learning 3. Where you want to go From there, we can discuss how we can both work on your development.

Hi, I'd like to talk. Email in profile

Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?

#124

Post by Jugurtha »

grzm wrote: post #103
linker3000 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gah: 'Mentee'. A Mentor doesn't practise the art of 'menting'! The name comes from the character of Mentor in Homer's Odyssey. A mentor has protégées. (Yeah, I know Wikipedia mentions 'mentee' - it's still a horrible word in my book.) /pet peeve!

Thanks for the etymology. Very interesting! At the same time, language evolves and changes. Expecting it not to is likely only to lead to frustration. (I'm not immune. "Steep learning curve" to mean something difficult to learn gets me a bit riled.) The change you observe here is back formation[0], I believe. Now, if you'll please excuse me. I think there are some kids on my lawn. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B…

>(I'm not immune. "Steep learning curve" to mean something difficult to learn gets me a bit riled.)

This has exactly the same effect on me. I've always thought about skill acquisition in terms of RC time constant: the time it takes me to reach 63.2% of something is finite and infinitely smaller than the time it takes to reach 100% (which never comes, hence the infinitely smaller), sometimes a sigmoid pops into my head.

So when I heard the expression "steepest learning curve" for the first time, I thought "sweet! tau is really small! Heaviside function like skill acquisition."

My brain melted when the context that followed the expression suggested that the thing was "really hard". "But.. but.. you have a Dirac like rate".

I use it sometimes but I give offerings to the Gods asking for forgiveness.

Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?

#125

Post by skylark »

defined wrote: post #101

I used to offer mentoring in a certain programming language via email. It soon became too time-intensive to continue with it, mostly because the people appeared unwilling or unable to do the necessary groundwork and just wanted answers without much effort on their part. They wanted, basically, supervision. I recall reading a very short book years ago, I think it was "The One-Minute Manager", and the biggest takeaway…

I used to love teaching people things, but as I've gotten older I've gotten more jaded. We all want to work with people in the bottom right square - those with potential and tenacity seeking to accelerate their progress. But the reality is that the vast majority of people (I'm guessing 95%+) are on the left side - they just want to be sold a dream.

At least for me, it's too soul crushing to work with people who completely lack motivation.

Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?

#126

Post by allenc »

Yea, I chat with ex-colleagues about their work and how they're faring since we've worked together.

I'm a director of eng. as well, so there'll be times when I reconnect with former managers and reports and provide/get mentorship that way as well. The key is to actually keep in contact and in touch beyond any singular job; if you were able to mentor them while you shared an office, that relationship is still valuable afterwards. Of course, this means that you have to develop the skill & reputation to be a good mentor to others around your job.

Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?

#128

Post by nteunckens »

I do some coaching in a local CoderDojo (https://coderdojo.com/) ... Great to see how kids engage and appreciate the help that you can provide. In doing this, I got some valid lifelessons on how to interact with people (regardless of age or skillset). It's really fun to 'teach' logical thinking to kids and - frankly - I sometimes gather a new perspective on things when problemsolving with these kids.

In fact, we're all ready to go for another season of coding and mentoring as of tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing familiar and new faces ...

Re: Ask HN: Do you do any mentoring outside of work?

#130

Post by vram22 »

BlackjackCF wrote: post #80

Hmm, not any mentoring... but someone asked me to give a talk about Golang at a small meetup recently. I felt like a fraud. I'm not qualified to give a talk on Go! But I went. It went really well, and I got a lot of people interested.

Cool. See impostor syndrome mentioned elsewhere in this thread. No need to feel like a fraud. Even if you know just somewhat more than some others, there can be value in what you can talk about to those others (not everyone) - this applies to any subject. The obvious caveat is that one should try to do a good job of the talk by preparing, trying to make it interesting (some), giving good examples, etc.
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