Finding a Mentor?

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Quick question. Do many experienced people on here have mentors and if so are they within you company or outside and how did you identify them?

Reason I ask is that i wouldn't mind a good mentor to bounce ideas off of and get career advice.

The thing is I'm reluctant to as I have roughly 15 years experience and in a fairly senior position. I maybe wrongly see seeking a mentor as a sign of weakness.

So easy to get advice at the start of you career but after a while it's assumed you just know what you want.

Any thoughts welcome.

L.Jenkins

In previous companies I've worked for, seeking a mentor up the career ladder in my chosen field was encouraged. So was seeking mentors laterally in other fields, where their experience added to my own, could be invaluable.

Not sure now how I'd find or engage with a mentor now though.

GetWithIt

It certainly isn't a sign of weakness, quite the opposite.

Look at people around you, who you respect. Not necessarily people in technical roles.

14ned

If you were a student, irrespective of age, I'd recommend Google Summer of Code (https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/archive/). You might be surprised at the age of some in that program, one of my students was 36, he was leaving architecture as a profession for software engineering, and he's done very very well for himself since (he's now working on Google's Fuscia new OS, how many of us ever get to build a new operating system?). This is despite never having written a line of code before the age of 33.

If you're in your mid-thirties, and unsure whether to stick with technical track or go for management track, I'd suggest you go take a Management postgrad part time and by distance. If you like the look of it, management track is for you, and fully qualified managers with software programming experience are rare and very valuable in Ireland.

Equally you might end up like me, who liked Management a lot, but in the end chose the technical track after finishing all the Management training. Unlike with Software Engineering, Management training doesn't expire with time, it only degrades slowly. You'll still be very hireable as a software team manager ten years from now.

Finally, it may also be that software development isn't for you any more. Like my 36 year old student, if you actually really want to do something else, your thirties are probably the last opportunity to retrain. Best not to leave it too late!

Niall

bpmurray

Having a mentor is not a sign of weakness but absolutely essential. In fact, I'd suggest not having a mentor could be interpreted as having a poor understanding of how to advance your career. What you want is to find someone who is a couple of steps above you on the career ladder, not necessarily directly so. Since you have 15 years experience, your career advancement now is really about broadening your influence so you're looking for folk who are in adjacent but linked areas so you get a better grasp of "the big picture".

Through my career I've had mentors from across my company (a large multinational so that included people from across the globe), as well as others in comparable roles in other companies, people I met when working on standards bodies, etc. Every one of them provided fantastic help.

Remember you can have a few mentors, each offering something. So if you're in a technical role, reach out to those in sales to understand what customers need; join a professional organisation and see if you can find someone who is willing to mentor you from there; check with your local business organisation(s) and see if there's anyone there. And so on. You don't need to check in every day - set up meetings in an ad-hoc fashion every couple of months. You'll be very surprised how much you'll learn.

One other thing - don't be afraid to reach out to someone who you think is really successful: the worst they can say is no. Elon Musk probably won't offer his services but you will definitely find someone who is globally influential if you just ask.