How to find mentors?

> How do you find mentors?

I go up to them, and I ask them.

And they usually like to spend any amount of time explaining, if they see that you're someone who might be able to understand the answer. And that's to a large degree just attitude. People are usually really happy to talk about things they know a lot about, not just to sound smart, but because they really like to think about it, and you get to think about it when you hear yourself talking... I really enjoy ranting, and listening to rants. I learned a lot of CS by listening to hour-long rants at the cafeteria. Some nerdy person just piping their /dev/urandom into your visual cortex.

Knowing what to want to know seems much harder.

https://sonnet.io/posts/hi/

It's not mentoring per se, but the list of people I speak with ranges from CS students asking for advice regarding their career to industry veterans. Sometimes we talk only once, but some of these relationships have lasted for more than a year so far. The latter are rare, still fairly casual.

I'm in the same boat as you, but I'm trying to focus a bit more on the product/business side of things. I've been mentoring engineers for 10+ years (and introduced the practice to several orgs). The irony is that I've ben struggling with finding a mentor for myself. The impromptu way seems to work better.

Also I second the comment made my sshine: "I go up to them, and I ask them." I sometimes reach out to people in my area just to learn about their work. We generally meet in person. This has been a bit harder since I left London, where it's hard to avoid interactions that are _not_ networking. But it's still doable even in my current location.

Took me 10 years but I found two in my life.

I randomly found one in his only appearance at a ruby meetup, giving a presentation that changed my life, opened me to the community where I met a now dear friend who also became my mentor.

I wish I had a suggestion, it seems like it just happened randomly, even though I was searching for ages.

> mostly because of working in startups with few experienced engineers

This is an under-appreciated cost of working at startups. It's fun to be the big fish in the pond, but it means that you have less access to resources for this sort of thing.

You've identified something that you think is high value to you, and should reasonably be supplied by your employer as part of your job -- access to a mentor. This is something to consider when looking at jobs.

1. Look around for people you respect/admire. 2. Just ask.

A lot of people will gladly help but don't do it because most people in general react badly to unsolicited advice. I have been trying to help people in the past but I wised up and now I am only offering help if they ask for it.

What do you expect from a mentor? For example, if you work with other engineers (preferably, experienced) in the same codebase on the same project, won't code reviews – a routine practice that a team ought to have anyway — count as continuous mentorship? Won't tech talks about ideas relevant for your field from various conferences count as mentorship? Don't books, blogs, or even tweets/toots by people you look up to count as mentorship?

A few steps

1. Meet people smarter than you, could be through meetups or discord etc. The more people you meet, the higher chance of someone you'd meet someone you'd want as a mentor

2. Being active as a mentee. Most people love mentoring but it's a two way street. If you don't make yourself available to be mentored you waste everyone's time

3. Show initiative as a mentee. Ask good questions and problems your solving related to your mentors expertise

Having had a lot of great amazing mentors in my life, and mentored just as many.

In my experience if you don't put yourself out there to be mentored you won't get anywhere. Most of my mentors have been through city slack channels, work, and meetup. Alot of my original mentors actually ask me advice having seen my career progression over time

I've had people ask me to mentor them but they expected me to magically transfer all my knowledge to them, suffice to say I didn't waste any time with them . When I found an amazing mentee I went out of my way to help them, and I got to see their progress and growth overtime. That was super rewarding

Once you identify what you need - you must also identify what the mentor will get out of the relationship. Primarily the mentor gets to feel high-value and appreciated. They may also be interested in hiring you or people you know. They may want to leverage your ideas or time - particularly on things that are not worth their time but are worth exploring. The relationship should not be exploitative, but should be mutually beneficial. You can indicate your value to them by doing some homework. Cold email is great, but have a specific question - "I'm interested in AI but having a hard time finding the right role to transition into the field - do you see good areas for me to apply my loosely related skill-set and get a toe-hold?".

Nearly 10 years ago my manager suggested we get a mentor so I chose a great Java developer in our team (I didn't have much OO experience) and wanted to learn about dependency injection and TDD and all that stuff. A couple of weeks later this great dev was pushed out / fired over some argument with a manager, so that ended pretty quickly! I had a great mentor when I started my last job although he left pretty quickly it was probably him that gave me the confidence to move from developer to tech arch. I hope it wasn't me that made them leave :-)

I was in a similar position for years. Paying for weekly session with someone can start you off, but its difficult.

Filtering for people who are: - good engineers - enjoy helping people - are good at helping people - have the time to help people - are mature enough to appreciate the self development value of mentoring someone else (its a great way to discover ones own weaknesses)

Leaves you with a very small pool of people. My advice is to consider people in areas that might not fit your mental image of what a mentor looks like, so someone younger than you for example.

I have benefitted a great deal from alternating between startups and larger, more established companies in the course of my career. Highly recommend seeking out a position with a company that is working on something you find compelling, where they have staff who have more depth of experience than you do.

Unfortunately I've had the opposite experience, so I worry my help won't be particularly helpful.

Almost every great mentor I've found was through work. Teammates that I would gravitate towards, usually because I was stumped on something.

Eventually they'd have something for me; then we have this sort of paired-mentoring thing going

A suitable stand-in would be open source projects for things you're interested in. For me, it's been Ansible -- particularly roles (reusable tasks) for it.

Get your hands dirty with something. The important part in finding a good mentor is being teachable

Tell 'them' (rather often a vague audience) what you're trying to do, how you're going about it, and how it's different from what you expect.

If things are presented well I've found people are usually eager to help

Not a direct answer to your question but related.

In your career there are periods of reaping and sowing, in various ways. In terms of mentorship, you are reaping when you are surrounded by people more senior than you, and you are sowing when you are the most senior one.

My experience has mainly been in top companies where there were always more senior people to learn from. Then I did a 2 year startup stint and had nobody to learn from (but had plenty to teach)

I think you are seeing this dynamic. Your best opportunity for mentorship is at work and you are recognizing that startup life doesn't give you that. If you are craving growth / mentorship, it may be a signal to look for a situation (big company) that can readily give you that to reap. After a few years, you can go back to sowing in startups at a higher level.

Best way to do this for startups who want to reach product market fit ASAP is Sparrow (https://sparrowstartup.com/).

Many YC founders have used them before. It works because all of their mentors/coaches have built 7-8 figure businesses themselves.

I'm a bit younger, working as a Software Engineer for a startup. I'm building my own projects to move towards them in the future as a real startup when it starts making money.

I don't have a mentor. I was thinking about it, but for me being active on websites connected with my lifestyle and following their valuable people in my topics: startups, technology, and building a successful business became a great way to improve every day.

For me these sites are Twitter, IndieHackers, HackerNews, ProductHunt, BetaList. I find there is so much precious content, better than reading some old blog posts or forums.

I can live day by day, following their ups and downs. I can actively comment on their work and ask questions. That's a hidden mentoring for me.

> mostly because of working in startups with few experienced engineers

Search one with experienced engineers then (?).

If you don't contemplate a change of workplace then I guess you shouldn't depend on people. Read books extensively, try to apply, see what works and what doesn't.

Dear friend, I believe that you should find a mentor in professional forums for engineers of various qualifications. By the way, the mentor must have an appreciative inquiry, listening skills, empathy, respect, warmth, focus, self-disclosure, observation skills and a good storyteller. You can view more responsibilities of a mentor here: https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-concept-of-mentoring/

I've usually found my mentors at work in the past, but you mentioned that your opportunities are limited in your startup. I've mentored many people myself and since I left my job at Amazon, I've been mentoring on mentorcruise.com. There are a few other platforms that do it as well. Yes, it costs money but it's an easy way to test-drive multiple mentors.

Regardless of how you find the mentor, the key is to make sure the relationship is a good match. It's easy to get caught up trying to work with the "smartest" person. But, you want a mentor you can feel at ease with.

Everytime I find myself trying to break down what I want from a mentor, I discover it's just a gaping hole in my heart from effectively being my own father and teaching myself how to exist, and then I get sad

I'm being serious though is the non-obvious part, I'm not making a quip. A mentor to me is someone who isn't teaching me "how" or even teaching me "why", they are teaching me "hmm"

I'm in my mid 40s and I try to remain receptive that a me from 20 years ago is looking for me now, and try to pay backwards what I couldn't steal forwards

You might want to find a platform for discovering mentors, something like MentorCruise.

You can find and discover mentors, and vet them via their profile or their LinkedIn (if linked). Normally you get a free session as well to get to know them.

I've mentored on there quite a bit and I think its a great platform.

Website: https://mentorcruise.com

My mentoring link: https://mentorcruise.com/mentor/jackgardner/

Your states' Professional Engineering Licensing agency should have continuing education requirements[1]. You can meet other professional engineers in those courses. I'm surprised you didn't make friends with other engineers during your studies.

For example, here is the information for my home state of Indiana:

[1] https://www.in.gov/pla/professions/engineering-home/engineer...

If you’ve been working in startups 10+ years, the inexperienced developers you worked with at the start of your career may now be very knowledgable, and mutual mentorship may be possible.

You would not. Experts will not spend time mentoring random people for free. In the past, mentorship or apprenticeships were provided in exchange for work. You might find someone willing to give you pointers if you start contributing to open source, but otherwise you need to learn yourself. You might pay a professional coach/therapist to help you on a personal/career level, but I would not expect anything from strangers for free.

Find someone who is really good at what they do and work for them for cheap. Or help them out in any way you can.

Relationships are a trade. Mentorship is a trade of guidance for volunteership.

I found mine by fixing his computer for free. He has a small business selling to the agriculture industry. When he asked for payment, I was more interested in the story of his business and how he made success. I never took payment and we ended up doing some large CCTV installations while he just wore the "business man" hat, I did all the tech and learned business vocab.

Have something to offer, be genuinely interested and it will happen. Don't be afraid to ask.

- Reach out and ask external and internal.

- Go to other teams and build relationships and ask for mentorship.

- It's your team's more senior members explicit responsibility to mentor you.

- Ask your company what they offer for training and mentoring.

- I _think_ some people charge $0 on mentorcruise.com.

Not having technical mentors really hold me back from getting the staff/principal level so as a manager now (one reason I switched but not the main one) I push hard for to enable mentoring for my teams and the org. Push hard to find one.

I've written about how to ask for help: https://play.teod.eu/interaction-value-differential/

I'm going to assume you don't have people on your team / in your organization you can learn from.

In short, I'd:

1. Make something that reflects the things that I'm curious to learn

2. Then ask specific people for specific advice about the thing I've made.

OP I'm in the exact boat. I'm in my 30s, been in startups for the entire time. Although I'm a go getter and very resourceful individual, I feel like I've made every single mistake that may have been avoided if I talked to someone that was in my shoes before.

That being said I don't regret anything at all.

If you're looking for someone to trade notes I'd happy to hop on a call and see where it goes.

I really enjoy using Mentorcuise.com, both as a mentor and as mentee. It's great to have mentors outside your own organization.

When working as a junior dev in title I had a designated "mentor" to work with/direct questions towards. I'm more a believer in the stance of "everyone has something to teach" and just try to learn things from whoever, whenever possible - but also understand this is somewhat a cop out for the original question

ADPList is one of platform for learning from mentor easily

feel free to use my referral links to signup https://adplist.org/invite/111309

reaching out to targeted people (eg. engineer working in your domain interest) in HN community also works :)

tbh I believe that people seek mentors to partake in some kind of social circle jerking rather than to do deep thought and the actual work. don't look up to them too much, the best insights I got was reading widely and doing deep work.

There's the Emacs Buddy initiative for students and explorers of Emacs.

https://github.com/ag91/emacs-buddy

Previous discussions - https://hn.algolia.com/?q=mentor

Not all results match

https://old.reddit.com/r/mentors/

Check out https://www.mentordial.com

https://mentoring-club.com/

there's important professional mentoring which addresses people/org/mgmt problems, I suspect there might be other good resources on higher-level software eng skills (architecture, refactoring, code organization) - appreciate if someone wants to share some!

Find some source code you like and reach out to the authors/get involved in the projects.

I’ve been trying to meet people outside of my company, i’d be down for a chat.

You don't find good mentors, good mentors find you.

I have had multiple good mentors in my career (both student and work) and I have been an attentive mentor to three people in my life.

Your mentors choose you, and it is wrong to think of mentors as ideas/advice machine. Mentors mingle with you depending on your personality, taste, potential, current level, etc.

Be yourself. Put yourself in situations and locations where you are more likely to cross paths with potential mentors. Communicate with people more. If you are eyeing someone specific, let them know of your existence, interests. And ask them advice on something specific. Keep the connection if the other party is willing.

Mentorship relations that form and evolve naturally are the best ones.

And mentorship relations are not one-size fits all. Some mentors are more attentive and more engaging than others. Some relations last for life, some for months. No kind is inherently better than the other.

tl;dr: be in places together with interesting people (fully online forums count, too). Ask for advice. Keep the connection. Let a relation form automatically.

Is there any money involved? Would the protege pick up stuff for the mentor?

you can find mentors on MentorColor https://mentorcolor.org

You insult by calling us boomers, but yet you want to find mentors. Please watch and consider. https://youtu.be/VC923Z4x8YQ

https://vektor.ai/ is an excellent platform for that!

You might be interested in https://www.codementor.io/ but it costs money.

You should try SharpestMinds - https://www.sharpestminds.com

Our mentors are mostly in the data science world, but many are senior software engineers.

Most of our mentees are 1st time job seekers (who appreciate our ISA model), but we did just launch more flexible payment options (e.g. pay by the hour) for folks like you!

Though you do have to pay, mentorships on SM often result in long-term relationships

Disclaimer: I run the company