Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

pindancing.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–89 of 89 posts

Re: The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

#81

Post by lootsauce »

phaus wrote: post #40
felipemnoa wrote: post #12

This is nice but I like this advice much better: Ira Glass quote: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is st…

> All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. On the whole, I agree with his sentiment that hard work will get you success, but the idea he magically started out with some kind of innate talent for telling whether or not things are good is the same type of illogical thinking he's talking about being discouraging to beginners.

Entirely agree. In art school our instructors often spoke of developing your eye. By seeing many things, thinking about them in depth and doing exercises you develop the skills needed to appreciate, differently the things you see. It was never about fostering some innate "taste" or aesthetic you had to get out. Talent surely does exist but you have no idea about it as a beginner. Talent functions on a level far beyond what most people think, before that comes passion, much time invested and the fruits of this are what most people mistake as talent.

Re: The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

#82

Post by [deleted] »

koolba wrote: post #20
mgamache wrote: post #7

I am being pedantic, but I hate the word mentee. I am not sure if it was made up, but it sounds like it. The proper word IMHO is protege.

It’s not the same thing. A protege is one person done your are grooming to be your replacement. A mentee is one of many people your are guiding down their own path.

[deleted]

Re: The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

#83

Post by dllthomas »

phaus wrote: post #40
felipemnoa wrote: post #12

This is nice but I like this advice much better: Ira Glass quote: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is st…

> All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. On the whole, I agree with his sentiment that hard work will get you success, but the idea he magically started out with some kind of innate talent for telling whether or not things are good is the same type of illogical thinking he's talking about being discouraging to beginners.

He doesn't say anyone "magically started out" with good taste. He's saying he had it when he started trying to get good at making his own stuff. At that point, he - presumably - had a lot of experience consuming media, and he had plenty of time to develop his understanding of what he thought was "good" and "not good". It's true that that understanding doesn't necessarily match society at large, although in the case of Ira his success indicates that it matched well enough with enough people.

Something that's not mentioned in the quote but that I think is really important is the fact that the media he was consuming in training his "ear" was - in our culture of mass-media - predominately produced by some of the very best of the very best (by some metric). Of course your early efforts are going to pale by comparison.

Re: The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

#84

Post by shostack »

Waterluvian wrote: post #16
felipemnoa wrote: post #12

This is nice but I like this advice much better: Ira Glass quote: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is st…

I love that perspective. To add to it, from personal experience: it really helps to be totally, wildly, embarrassingly ignorant of your incompetence at the start. It softens that part where your work disappoints you, because you don't know better. Now, I don't know if this is actually good advice or even actionable, advice, but I've seen it and experienced it many times and it very much enabled me to move past awfuln…

I wish I still had my music videos and more of the art I made. I found stuff I created when I was a teenager and younger that I'd totally forgotten about. Things I modeled in software, things I sketched, things I built from Lego, things I wrote, music I made, things I crafted from wood and leather by hand.

I almost got teary eyed thinking about how amazing adult me considered the work of child me and all of the free time and creative energy that came with it. I'd do anything to be able to get that kind of creativity back. But I suspect it was a function of both youth and not having a job that draws upon my mental resources so heavily.

Re: The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

#85

Post by MaulingMonkey »

Waterluvian wrote: post #16
felipemnoa wrote: post #12

This is nice but I like this advice much better: Ira Glass quote: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is st…

I love that perspective. To add to it, from personal experience: it really helps to be totally, wildly, embarrassingly ignorant of your incompetence at the start. It softens that part where your work disappoints you, because you don't know better. Now, I don't know if this is actually good advice or even actionable, advice, but I've seen it and experienced it many times and it very much enabled me to move past awfuln…

An alternative to ignorance is to be enthralled by the process. I knew many of my programs weren't great or amazing growing up, but I was too into the puzzle of how programs and programming works to care. The result was, frankly, secondary to the process.

I'm not an amazing piano player, but with a MIDI keyboard and headphones I can gameify it, enjoy the process of practice and learning, measure progress even when it's sometimes hard to see, and do this all even if I'm still skittish about actually performing any of it for others.

With something like art - I have trouble seeing my progress, gamifying it, I have a certain vicious judgement of my own work beyond what I judge the art of others by, and I'm not particularly into the process for it's own sake. I haven't made any progress there since high school!

Re: The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

#86

Post by shiitake »

mmaunder wrote: post #33

"For some reason Bangalore is crawling with people who first want to form a community and then start learning/working/whatever." Seattle is the same. Probably the same everywhere. It's easier to talk and drink coffee than to challenge yourself way outside your comfort zone for hours at a time, day after day.

I hosted a software dev meetup in Texas for several years and also saw this. Especially when we co-hosted with another meetup that was devoted to beginners.

I observed a few common threads:

1. A lot of beginners don't know exactly WHY they want to do XYZ. Why do you want to learn to code? Or play guitar? Or be an entrepreneur? Or make video games? It is perfectly okay to want to do something because it is potentially lucrative. But there really needs to be more to it. If you are passionate about XYZ - which parts specifically? Do you like building things to solve problems? Or writing songs? Or telling stories?

2. Most beginners have done very little basic research about what is involved in actually doing XYZ. I always asked beginner devs if they thought they could be happy spending 6+ hours a day thinking/writing/debugging code. Nobody else had ever mentioned that to them - they'd just been told "learn to code".

If you can get through those beginner questions the advice is always a variation on the same theme: do XYZ to whatever degree you can. Don't get distracted by meetings or tools or blog posts.

Re: The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

#87

Post by sh87 »

felipemnoa wrote: post #12

This is nice but I like this advice much better: Ira Glass quote: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is st…

> ... the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work ... It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions

This volume of work coupled with a closed feedback loop (Do - observe - measure - tweak - Do) allows for achieving astonishing results. Also taking a skill apart, practicing and improving individual skills and then putting it all together is the basis of acquiring and mastering skill.

I do not believe a mentor can help with acquiring skill. But a good mentor can quickly identify and guide you to the parts that need attention and practice.

Re: The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

#88

Post by sh87 »

yurishimo wrote: post #31
Waterluvian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that perspective. To add to it, from personal experience: it really helps to be totally, wildly, embarrassingly ignorant of your incompetence at the start. It softens that part where your work disappoints you, because you don't know better. Now, I don't know if this is actually good advice or even actionable, advice, but I've seen it and experienced it many times and it very much enabled me to move past awfuln…

Your guitar story reminded me of my one of my own. My uncle gave me an old crappy guitar for Christmas while they were driving through to visit other relatives. He was a signed musician at the time so he had all sorts of extra instruments laying around that companies would send him just because. Later that next year for my birthday (today actually, but a few years ago!), my family gave me one of those "Learn Guitar"…

Happy Birthday ! I had a guitar that my (not a musician) uncle gifted me too. Never stuck with it long enough. Last year (after we moved to another country) I was gifted a Ukelele. My family still recognizes my longing wish for learing to make music this I guess. Thanks for sharing.

Re: The answer to “Will you mentor me?” is no (2010)

#89

Post by wolco »

michaelt wrote: post #67
wolco wrote: post #17

Offering money or something can go a long way.

IDK about the money angle. I mean, how's a student going to pay the hourly rate of an average mid-career FAANG employee - to say nothing of a CEO, VC or famous coder?

Wash dishes or cook a meal once a week. The amount would based on the individuals.

A CEO shouldn't be the ideal target of a student. There is a lot to offer the student but little for the CEO unless they are related or doing a favour. A junior exec makes more sense.

Someone 10 years away makes a better mentor relationship than 50 years.

Post reply on HN