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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?

#131

Post by kdbg »

I kinda do. Not is a professional sense but with teens/preteens mostly. Some years ago I was linled to a chat described as filled with skiddies (I do vuln research and dev). What i found was some lids who had taught themselves Visual Basic in order to male cheats and trainers for flash games.

I stuck around helped them learn more about programming, reverse engineering, and eventually exploit development.

Over the years the group has changed but I established myself as one willing to take questions and help people learn. It took sometime to establish myself especially among that age group but I just stuck it out because I saw people willing and tryimg to learn.

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

#132

Post by emcarey »

Yes - I have an hour every Saturday I put aside for a weekly mentoring meeting. I have a lot of people reach out to me for advice, but as a founder I don't have time to meet every request. Instead, I have my Saturday afternoon hold each week for a call or coffee with people who reach out for guidance on hiring engineers, fundraising, starting a startup so there is a controlled time slot for mentoring meetings. Being a founder is really hard, we're a startup that is post revenue, post seed venture, post product market fit - but everything just seems more complex as we get bigger and there are more failures all the time with bigger consequences. These mentor meetings with founders just starting out give me a healthy pause to realize how far we've come and I feel better knowing I can help other new founders not feel so alone in the early stage process.

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

#134

Post by mclemme »

Symbiote wrote: post #82
mclemme wrote: post #10

I mentor a young guy who came to Denmark as a refugee a few years ago, we met through the mentor program at the Danish Refugee Council. After two years of courses in math, physics, English, biology and Danish he finally got accepted into university and has his first day today studying robotics. Signed up to help out at http://www.hackyourfuture.net/ as well, seems like an amazing project.

Did you speak English, or Danish? I signed up to teach some programming to children in England, but then got a job in Copenhagen before starting. It will be years before my Danish is good enough to understand children in a classroom.

Both, I'm Danish. The guy I mentor is 22 years old now, he already spoke English when he arrived and has since learnt Danish.

You can sign up here:

https://flygtning.dk/frivillig/hvad-vi-laver/mentorprogramme...

There's also Coding Pirates, which is aimed at teaching kids technology, programming, etc.: https://codingpirates.dk/

And Hack Your Future - http://www.hackyourfuture.net/

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

#136

Post by davedx »

dotdi wrote: post #19
davedx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you interested in learning?

Being a few years into my programming career, I'd be really grateful for somebody to help/guide at a higher level than, say, learning language X or pattern Y. It's a bit tough to clearly define, but I think I don't know any developer that is really striving towards mastery on any level, with most colleagues and acquaintances doing the bare minimum to get by.

Well if you need advice on programming or career related topics, feel free to drop me an email. I've benefited from having strong technical leads a few times in my career which was really great, and I'd be happy to try and give back a bit if I can help somehow. davedx@gmail.com

Good luck!

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