If you have to ask that question, then you already know the answer.
With a good mentor, thoughts like that would never even enter your mind. Why? Because a good mentor would never just tell you what to do, he/she would share data in such a way that you would learn what to do.
If you don't find a way to turn mentor input into new actionable wisdom very quickly (even instantly) and feel confident about it, then it's probably time to find another mentor.
On that note, I've been considering of mentoring entry/medium-level developers for some time now but I seriously don't know what exactly that entails.
My goal is to help people understand and appreciate the importance of well formed, semantic HTML and CSS and unobtrusive javascript.
My belief is that all these different libraries/frameworks (Backbone, Angular, Bootstrap, Foundation, etc etc) confuse new comers and abstract them from actually learning the importance of well written HTML/CSS/JS in developer productivity and application maintenance.
Sometimes these libs make it very easy for developers to focus too much on short term gains at the expense of long-term maintainability and understanding what the code they publish actually does!
If anyone wants to help me become a mentor by mentoring them on HTML, CSS, JS please let me know.
The biggest challenge to being a mentor isn't wisdom, it is respect. The person you are trying to teach needs to respect you before they will be willing to learn from you.
“That guy doesn’t know shit. Why should I listen to him? Why is he even here?” I'd be that guy. I wouldn't be presuming you don't know shit or wondering why you're here, but rather wondering why a guy in the same position as most people trying to launch a startup is mentoring people.
Having said that, promoting oneself seems to be part of entrepreneurial culture and I don't blame you for seizing the opportunity to do it.
Why? You don't believe he may have learned some useful stuff from the process of "trying to get a startup off the ground"? Some "stuff" that could be useful to someone who is earlier in their own journey than the OP? If so, why wouldn't he share?
And as far as that goes... I don't know about you, but I subscribe to the belief that "everybody can learn something from pretty much everybody else".
There's also something to be said for the old saw about how an expert's mind is full and closed to new possibilities, while a beginner doesn't know what is "not possible" and can therefore discover new things more easily.
I think it's fine to go to events and share experiences as part of conversation
I absolutely think you can learn something from everybody. In this situation, I feel that should be in the context of learning from a peer, rather than a mentor
Being in Pakistan, I get to meet tons of industry experts who have racked up millions solely by outsourcing and creating low-quality software for cheap. All they do is that they bring you down to their own ambition-level. Don't listen to them !
some real life examples:
"so why would you like to hire such an expensive resource here when you can get two average developers for a lot less and he can get your job done? that's bur resource management"
"you mentioned celebrities in your pitch but let me just tell you one thing , those people will never use your app"
Having said that, too limited ambition can get you the same result that too much ambition can.
I would encourage everyone to be a "mentor". Go and talk to some younger/junior/less experienced people and you will realize how much they need you. No matter how small, you could make a difference. And you want to know another secret? You will suddenly realize how much you actually know when you try to teach/mentor someone else. You will also improve your own skills including communication, interaction etc etc.
This project was started when it became clear that quite a few posters in r/learnprogramming wanted to contribute to open source projects, but didn't know how or noticed that having their PR rejected did in fact not afford the greatest learning experience. LPMC aims to, among other things:
1. Match students with projects
2. Help students create pull requests worthy of being merged by upstream (offloading busy maintainers)
If this sounds interesting you can check out http://learnprogramming.github.io/ or come shoot the shit in #lpmc@irc.freenode.net
I don't know if I'd be able to do much "one on one" mentoring, as time is awfully limited right now. But I have a lecture/class or two in mind that I'll probably offer to teach somewhere in the RTP area later this year. I have learned enough about market research to do a useful one or two night session on the topic.
No, I'm not an expert on it, but what I've learned in the past 2 years would possibly be beneficial to the people who are now, where I was two years ago. I figure if I can help shorten someone else's learning curve, that's a good thing. And, inevitably, if I do the class, I'll learn a lot from the process itself.
So yeah, if you have some useful knowledge you've accumulated (and you probably do) teach a class, or take on a pupil to mentor. It's a win-win for everybody.
I've started a number of businesses over the past 10 years, first of which was when i was 17, i've learned so much over this time, but had dismissed it as general knowledge.
Recently I took part in an accelerator here in the UK and one of the things I enjoyed most was offering advise to other teams, even just on simple things like Tax/Vat etc. I really didn't appreciate that much of the knowledge I've amassed over the past 10 years was valuable to people in the early stage of a new business.
I'm hoping to be invited back to that accelerator as a mentor this year, and I'd hope I can do this for other accelerators too as it's extremely rewarding, I'd almost say I find it more rewarding helping others than building my own startup!
We don't get paid, but I still benefit from it, of course; my knowledge and teaching ability have both greatly improved. It's fun, too =)
A word of advice: operate outside of your school's official tutoring system. Just get a bunch of friends and make yourselves known within your department: you'll spend less time working the system and more time helping people. Feel free to get in touch for advice.
