

Ask HN: Find a technical mentor - itay

I've recently been thinking that I could benefit from a technical mentor.<p>I'm a technical person by nature, and work as a software engineer as my job. My expertise is on the lower-
level side of things, mainly involving operating systems. While I have plenty of "mentorship" day-to-day from
people I respect and admire, on my personal projects (or projects I hope to turn into ventures), 
which have nothing to do with what I do for my employer, I feel I'm lacking.<p>I'll give an example to illustrate. A few months back I wrote a small project in django, because I was curious
about server-side development, and wanted to try django out. It worked out fairly well, and I have no problem
figuring out how to get what I want done for the most part. But I always have this nagging feeling that I
<i>could</i> do it better, that there is a <i>better</i> way. Now, I'll happily concede that practice makes perfect,
and I do more web development, I'll get better at it and figure out the <i>better</i> way. But I feel that by
having a mentor I can expand my horizons and learn from someone else's experience, which I think is invaluable.<p>In the above example, I would talk to my mentor about how it's best to model the functionality in the database,
and best ways to implement some functionality, etc. I would do all the coding, they would be a "wise and 
experienced sounding board".<p>Basically, I don't see "learning by doing" and "learning through mentorship" to be mutually exclusive,
and both can happen at the same time.<p>So what am I looking for? Someone whose technical skills are complementary to my own (mainly looking for
people with python/django experience and iphone/objc experience, the areas I'm trying to grow in), and who
is willing to be the "wise and experienced sounding board".<p>My question to HN is two-fold:
	a. What's a good way to find such a person? The problem is that most of my technical friends/coworkers
	have a skill set very similar to my own (or in areas which are not that interesting to me). So I have to
	look outside my usual circle, hence asking for advice of where to look.
	b. If there happens to be anyone reading this who is interested, that would be great too :)<p>A fair question that I feel may come up is what does the mentor get in return. I don't have a good answer,
which is why I've been mulling for a few days whether to post this or not. The short answer is "not much",
beyond the satisfaction of seeing someone grow and having a willing student (things I've enjoyed very much
when I'm on the other side of the mentor/mentee relationship), as well as a friend. And obviously, if there
is something that's reasonable to do in return, I'm always open to suggestions.<p>Thanks in advance, and looking forward to your thoughts!
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retube
this is an interesting concept, but from my own experience I'd say partnering
up on a project with someone technically more proficient than you is the way
to go. It'd be incredibly hard, I imagine, for an "external" individual to be
the sounding board you feel you need simply because unless they're involved in
the every-day nitty gritty they're simply not going to have the perspective
required.

For more general issues, there are plenty of good online resources - e.g
stackoverflow.

As an aside, one thing we've had no luck with is finding a business / strategy
mentor....

~~~
itay
You bring up two interesting points.

Regarding the first (partnering), I definitely think that's a great way to
learn and I'm definitely open to those possibilities if someone is interested.
Though the question still stands regarding how to find such a person, and also
how to make them want to let you work with them when you're admitting upfront
that you're not a superstar? :)

Regarding the second (difficulties of being external), I'm not sure I agree.
Say for example I wanted to make a HN-like website. I'd talk to this person
about it, and say that I was planning on having one table for posts, and one
table for comments, and then I'd scan the comments to rebuild the threaded
discussion tree. "Mentor" might respond by saying "that's an OK start, but
you're going to hit some bottlenecks pretty quick. Here's another way to do
it/think about it/etc".

I think that in reality, when you bring projects down to their architecture
and design, they become manageable even for an external person, as long as
they've been involved from the beginning. As such, I definitely think they
have an opportunity to make an impact.

Regarding your desire to find a strategy/business mentor, maybe this post is
helpful: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1098994>

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ArabGeek
check out <http://arabcrunch.net/mentorship>

