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Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?

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Re: Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?

#11

Post by zhte415 »

The best mentors I've had have been people I didn't know were my mentors until I thought about it.

A perhaps my experience would be 'People I met outside a casual social circle (though I see no reason they can't exist within) with a high level of experience and insight into a field of expertise (technical or non-technical) that also enjoyed my company and my giving / reflecting something back to them.'

Seek people out in environments you're comfortable, and don't discount the value-add face-to-face contact can make. A small word of warning also - mentors can be great inspirers, but that doesn't mean they would make a good fit as a boss or employee later (just as working _for_ a friend can break relationships).

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?

#14

Post by kaptain »

I saw your post and it made me think of my own experience in desiring to grow spiritually. I come from an evangelical Christian background and for those unfamiliar with this sub-culture there's a saying that "everyone should have a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy."

What this means is that, if you're serious about your personal spiritual development, you need three things:

* a mentor (Paul): someone that is more experienced than you and can help you grow in ways that you were unaware of and who can help you develop your personal gifting.

* a comrade (Barnabas): someone that is at your level whom you can mutually encourage and grow with.

* a person to mentor (Timothy): someone whom you are a Paul to.

I think this has applications beyond spiritual development; it can be applied to any field/dimension that you want to grow in. Part of my problem in college that I was always fixated on having a mentor but never asked myself who my Barnabases and Timothys were.

As the years passed, I put aside this unhealthy fixation on having this spiritual mentor and I found myself begin to grow as I embraced the people around me as Barnabases and Timothys. I don't want to discourage you from looking for a mentor; it's awesome to find one. But don't feel like you can't grow as a programmer/developer without one. Growth takes lots of different forms and it would be a shame, in my opinion, if instead of growing, you spent your time waiting for Godot.

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?

#15

Post by canttestthis »

This is only somewhat related to becoming a better programmer but I'd rather post here than create my own thread for this.

I just graduated from college and I start work in 4 months as a software dev at a company that you've probably heard of and use on a regular basis. What can I do in these 4 months to maximize my chance of success at this company?

I thought I might go through SICP but I'm not sure if this is more of a theoretical exercise or if it will directly improve my work. I can't work on any open source projects because of the learning curve required to get familiar with the codebase, + I won't be able to work on it once I start my regular work.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?

#16

Post by yid »

canttestthis wrote: post #15

This is only somewhat related to becoming a better programmer but I'd rather post here than create my own thread for this. I just graduated from college and I start work in 4 months as a software dev at a company that you've probably heard of and use on a regular basis. What can I do in these 4 months to maximize my chance of success at this company? I thought I might go through SICP but I'm not sure if this is more…

The biggest challenges you're going to have aren't going to come out of CLRS. Pick a large open-source project and practice getting up to speed with the architecture and organization, because that's what you'll be doing at your job (sans the open-source probably).

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?

#17

Post by kenferry »

kaptain wrote: post #14

I saw your post and it made me think of my own experience in desiring to grow spiritually. I come from an evangelical Christian background and for those unfamiliar with this sub-culture there's a saying that "everyone should have a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy." What this means is that, if you're serious about your personal spiritual development, you need three things: * a mentor (Paul): someone that is more exper…

That structure is more or less what we're doing with our iPad app, Understudy, for SICP. If someone signs up for SICP, we pair them with another user a bit ahead, to talk to once a week. Once they're a ways in, they start leading another user just starting out.

http://blog.understudyapp.com/learn-sicp-make-friends/

[Obvious disclaimer - I work on this. It was posted to HN a few weeks ago.]

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?

#18

Post by jseliger »

Ah! I finally have a useful answer, because wrote about this here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-pro... .

More nuts-and-bolts answers are much harder: look for programming or similar groups around you. If you find people you admire online, ask if you can buy them coffee when they're in town. There is no easy answer because possible mentors and mentees are subject to adverse signaling problems.

It's still much harder to find a mentor online than off.

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?

#19

Post by nicolethenerd »

canttestthis wrote: post #15

This is only somewhat related to becoming a better programmer but I'd rather post here than create my own thread for this. I just graduated from college and I start work in 4 months as a software dev at a company that you've probably heard of and use on a regular basis. What can I do in these 4 months to maximize my chance of success at this company? I thought I might go through SICP but I'm not sure if this is more…

Do you know what you'll be working on, or what tech stack you'll be using? I would probably try to get familiar w/ the specific languages, libraries, and tools you'll be using on the job - maybe build a small project in them and/or go through some tutorials. Also, when I say tools, I don't just mean libraries - but also things like version control (git), and continuous integration (jenkins), if your company uses those - in my undergraduate program, we never did much with those, and it's good to be aware of them.

It can't hurt to reach out to the company/team and ask what tech stack they use and what you can do to get prepared - being on the other side of this, I was thrilled when someone I hired recently asked this very question.

Re: Ask HN: How Can I Find a Mentor?

#20

Post by jacquesm »

Instead of finding a mentor, maybe find a buddy? I recall from my own days of early learning that doing things with another person made them much more fun and made the time go by very fast compared to learning alone. It also led to much more interesting avenues of research and the sum was much greater than the parts.

A mentor-student situation is typically mostly a one-way street.

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