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Discussion on: YES! You Should Be A Mentor!

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

DEV is naturally a space for mentorship in a variety of ways,

We have a space for explicitly seeking mentorship and offering mentorship...

dev.to/listings

Currently we haven't done a great job of promoting it so this listings feature is underutilized, but please feel free to consider a mentorship listing (seeking or offering).

Listings has been a huge success in the areas it's been most adopted and we still feel like mentorship is a great use case, we just need to promote it better and build up the ecosystem over there.

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desolosubhumus profile image
Desolo Sub Humus 🌎🌍

I know I've considered looking for a mentor, at least for the parts of JavaScript that confuse me (or perhaps I'm just not wired in a way that lets JS feel 'natural', like CSS does). I'm just worried about two main things-

Cost - I've not had the privilege of working in any sort of coding environment, nor have I been around traditional coding college classes or coding camps. I'd have a long way to walk (multiple days) across an empty desert with no source of water other than a canteen to be even remotely close to other people who write code. I really have no idea how much mentorship normally costs and no way to really pay for it anyway.

Time - My schedule isn't so much a schedule as it is a constant barrage of surprise crises to deal with. My paid job requires I have a flexible schedule (I am informed if and when I will be working no more than 7 days out with no set shift, it could change at any minute and I need to be at work instantly if that's called for, and no holidays) and my main unpaid, but legally mandated job is a 24/7 live-in thing. I have absolutely no control over my own time and have no way of guaranteeing I can even show up remotely on any pre-arranged time schedule.

I'm hoping that changes someday, because I'd really like to know what it's like to have some sort of guidance from a live mentor and not just random tutorials, blogs, articles, and questionable answers on Stack Overflow. Don't get me wrong - they can all be quite helpful, but I imagine it's not quite the same as having an actual human mentor, one on one.