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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?

#101

Post by defined »

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 got from that is that you have to adopt different styles according to people's motivation and skill (a 2x2 grid similar to [1]).

It appears "mentoring" (coaching) is appropriate for people who have skill but lack motivation or confidence. This definitely correlates with my experiences.

[1]: https://goo.gl/images/EvBi7x

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

#102

Post by cafard »

linker3000 wrote: post #95
numbsafari wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job of a mentor is often simply to listen, and to help the mentee hold themselves accountable. If you've been successful in your career, in spite of what you perceive as personal limitations, I bet you have the humility to be a good listener and an empathetic motivator. Honestly, if you look at most professional mentors and coaches, especially in sports, they aren't "the best" in their field. They are people who…

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!

Thank you. It is a pet peeve of mine also.

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

#103

Post by grzm »

linker3000 wrote: post #95
numbsafari wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job of a mentor is often simply to listen, and to help the mentee hold themselves accountable. If you've been successful in your career, in spite of what you perceive as personal limitations, I bet you have the humility to be a good listener and an empathetic motivator. Honestly, if you look at most professional mentors and coaches, especially in sports, they aren't "the best" in their field. They are people who…

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/Back-formation

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

#104

Post by neduma »

uber1geek wrote: post #6

I mentor a developer community which i nurtured from scratch in the conflict ridden valley of Kashmir. My mantra of life is "grow and let others grow with you." If you want to pitch in , just drop me an email. http://www.gdgkashmir.com

You're awesome. Sir.

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

#105

Post by cosmie »

JnBrymn wrote: post #64

In Nashville (and growing elsewhere) we started a community around self-organizing peer-mentorship. Checkout it out http://pennyuniversity.org It's very rudimentary and grass roots at this point. (I mean.. we're a Slack Team and a Google Forum.) But the idea is that everyone has things they want to learn and thing that they can share. PennyUniversity serves as the community for people that want to make In-Real-Life c…

That's really neat! I'm in Nashville and haven't ever heard of this. Have you guys reached out to groups like the NTC[1] to potentially advertise in their newsletter? It seems like a lot of their audience would be interested in just this sort of thing.

[1] https://technologycouncil.com/

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

#106

Post by arupchak »

There are a couple of CS programs, especially community colleges, where they actively ask for folks with industry experience to mentor students.

There are also boot camp programs that do the same. In particular, I have mentored at Hackbright Academy, and I only have great things to say about the experience. I am pretty sure that I get more out of the experience of mentoring the students than they do :)

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

#107

Post by kmill »

linker3000 wrote: post #95
numbsafari wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job of a mentor is often simply to listen, and to help the mentee hold themselves accountable. If you've been successful in your career, in spite of what you perceive as personal limitations, I bet you have the humility to be a good listener and an empathetic motivator. Honestly, if you look at most professional mentors and coaches, especially in sports, they aren't "the best" in their field. They are people who…

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!

Are you sure the name ultimately comes from the character? Or was the character named after the idea of advising? The Online Etymology Dictionary suggests it means "advisor" as the agent noun for mentos, meaning "intent, purpose, spirit, passion." It could be related to monitor, and "men-", "to think."

Prescribe how you want, but one could make the case the mentee is the spirit-receiver of the mentor.

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

#108

Post by breischl »

hycaria wrote: post #51
kcorbitt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with most colleagues and acquaintances doing the bare minimum to get by. The best way to level your skills up fast as a junior developer is to work somewhere where most of your coworkers are skilled and passionate. It sounds like you're not in one of those places (which is normal -- unfortunately most developers aren't). If changing workplaces isn't an option, then your second-best alternative is to get involved wi…

It's maybe a bit early for me (experience Open-source projects seem like a great idea, especially for someone like myself who doesn't have many creative ideas, although I finally found one a few weeks ago (fullfilling my own needs as no website seem to do what I'm thinking of atm). It's rather niche though, and I could probably do it on my own but I don't know what I could learn that would be useful. I would probably…

>landing a job where people are passionate is going to be hard with my little experience.

They're out there. You might consider some of the tech companies that are large enough to have intern programs. Even if you don't want to be an intern, it signals a willingness to take on entry-level people.

Also, I say "tech companies" just because when the tech is the product, that tends to produce a more ambitious tech culture than places where it's just a cost of doing business.

Shameless plug: You might consider HomeAway if you're in the right geo area. We take interns, and have hired a few new grads/low-experience devs into my teams recently who are working out swimmingly. But I'm sure there are many other companies that would work.

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

#109

Post by nfriedly »

Yea, people just email me out of the blue asking for help sometimes.

I used to freelance full-time, and I wrote a number of articles to help market my services. Between that and my open source work, I'm pretty easy to find. I think at one point, my site was ranked 6th on google for "JavaScript Expert".

I lived in SF for a while and then moved back to Ohio and started a local JS meetup. I did a lot of presentations there, although I'm not sure if it would count as mentoring. I had a son about a year after starting it, so I handed off the reigns to a local agency with a bit more free time then what I suddenly had.

I've also helped some of my friends' children get started on Khan Academy (programing and other things), and I'm looking forward to when my son will be ready (he just turned 3 ;)

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

#110

Post by SOlItIcKlANstIs »

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 ?
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