
Ask HN: Would you like to receive or provide mentorship? - dkthehuman
Would anyone be interested if I created a directory of mentors across tech who you could reach out to in order to have 30-minute chats over coffee, tea, boba, phone, etc.? You could chat with people to get career advice, explore different roles and companies, and discuss fun questions like &quot;What are the ethical implications of working in an industry that affects the lives of billions of people around the world?&quot; and &quot;Should I sell everything I own to buy bitcoin?&quot; If you&#x27;re interesting in <i></i>receiving<i></i> mentorship and would like to get updates about this project, you can fill out this form: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forms.gle&#x2F;pyQM5GnXGgsHhufRA<p>If you&#x27;re interested in <i></i>providing<i></i> mentorship, please fill out this form (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forms.gle&#x2F;JqfPKzxRZa5qSwFg6) and I&#x27;ll reach out with next steps. The only qualification required to be a mentor would be having experience working full-time in tech. Since people will reach out to you based on your background, you don’t need to worry about whether you have enough experience to be a “mentor” — you can view the chats as sharing your experiences and perspective rather than giving The Best Advice Ever.<p>Thanks! I&#x27;d like to gauge interest before investing more time into this (planning to build this out if I get &gt; 100 interested mentors).
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wjossey
I do mentoring for managers and primarily get all of my signups from here or
twitter when I mention the program in response to a specific thread / topic.
At this point, I wouldn’t likely “list” myself because I’m able to fill up my
calendar in full without any outside help. I do one 45 minute session each
business day, and I’m usually booked up a few weeks in advance.

I’m sharing this not to discourage you, but highlight a potential downside
where the quality of the mentor (someone who has a lot of practice mentoring
strangers) might not lean in to a directory listing. I might be totally wrong
about this though, so take it with a grain of salt.

One additional recommendation is to require mentors to use calendly or some
scheduling software that people can use for scheduling a session. It keeps the
process moving really efficiently and services like calendly let me blend my
work schedule with my mentoring schedule seemlessly.

Good luck either way! Hope it’s a smashing success.

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Bucephalus355
A lot of people are significantly interested in this. Just look at the
responses this person’s mentoring threads get on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/shehackspurple](https://twitter.com/shehackspurple)

One thing though. There seems to be some internet shyness ppl have in getting
the ball rolling on these kinds of mentoring projects. Would try to plan to
deal with that fear of either party reaching out.

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dskang
Oh, this is very, very cool. Seems like a lot of people would be helped by a
tool that makes it easier to search/find availability/lowers the friction to
both providing and receiving mentorship. Thanks for sharing!

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ctas
I offer private mentoring in full-stack development and more on a regular
basis. I believe most mentoring relationships start with the people around
you, at least mine did. I'm not sure how well a directory like this would
convert for the individual mentors, but I think it's a great idea to try out.

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apexkid
There are few people who do this already. You can collaborate with them. Have
you checked out:

www.outofofficehours.com

www.twoleaps.com

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dskang
Awesome, thanks for sharing these!

