I’ve had a very tough time finding my first position as a junior dev and have been looking into getting a paid mentor to help me out. Someone who can give me a specific, clear idea of what skills I might need to have, refine, etc, as well as some looser guidance and direction after losing my confidence.
Do any of you have experience with services like this? Somewhere like Mentor Cruise or something similar?
Edit: to be clear, I’m looking for my first role as a web developer, ideally frontend with React (which is what I feel most confident in). I’ve been at this for over a year and a half - I do have a portfolio, Github, etc with projects in JS and some basic Python. I’m aware of how to look for a job, but actually getting anyone to look at me has been the hard part, as I’ve only had two interviews that went nowhere. The handful of people who’ve seen my portfolio seemed fine with it and the impression I have is that it is enough to demonstrate my skill level, but I’m still getting very little back.
Since others already suggested mostly on-topic suggests, here’s an alternative suggestion:
Instead of looking specifically for a mentor - look for an open source project that you can help with. Ideally one with a discord or something to it’s easy to be in contact the the lead dev. A lot people don’t mind mentoring juniors, but in my experience it doesn’t happens that explicitly - “be my mentor” - and it might sound like you’re asking them a lot.
If you invert it into “Hey I wanna help you with your open-source project, but I don’t really know what to do, what your expectations are, how to implement a specific feature” - then you’re offering to do work them, instead of asking for something. And implicitly you’ll get mentorship in return.
And “real” projects probably also look better on your github / portfolio than only some dummy projects for learning purposes
I like mentoring, but my skill set is deep and narrow. DM me and we’ll see if they overlap and if I can match the time commitment that you are looking for, if you are interested. No fee.
I’d recommend setting up a GitHub profile and developing some personal projects on there, and try to get some experience contributing to other projects (even if they’re just simple first PRs). Make sure you include this on your resume, it’s a great talking point for juniors to show you’re passionate and have concrete examples of your code in the wild.
Also set up a LinkedIn profile (fleshed out as best you can) and start adding people at companies you’re interested in. DM them asking for advice, most people are lovely and want to help. While LinkedIn is horrible and needs to die, it’s still used heavily by the tech industry and you’ll find every tech company and recruiters on there.
If you have some questions why not post here? I’m unfamiliar with “services” (places that charge their own fees on top of what the mentor gets) and think it’s probably better to engage someone directly. The thing is, doing it as a business proposition sounds expensive if you’re paying with personal funds. Consulting rates for someone good will be pretty steep.
What are you good at now? What do you want to get better at? What kind of work do you want to do?
I’ve posted in other communities (like on Reddit) and largely gotten vague, very poor, or aggressive responses. My hope with a dedicated mentor is that I’d get someone I can work with over a few months to figure out what the issues are in my search. Although it’s not bonkers expensive, it does cost a decent chunk of change.
I’m mostly interested in webdev right now - my main skill set is in React and Node but I’m much more comfortable in frontend work. I’ve been working on learning C#/.NET since many jobs in my city want it and I find it a bit more intuitive, but it’s been slow going learning a whole new language and framework while working full time at a non-dev job. A longer term goal for me is to move into game dev but I’ve put that on hold because of the hard times that industry is going through, of course.
I see, hmm. Do you hang out on hacker news? News.ycombinator.com. it is an ok place to make contacts. I could help with backend dev but not the areas you mentioned.
Stay away from game dev unless you’re independent. That industry sucks even worse than web dev.
specific, clear idea of what skills I might need to have, refine, etc,
Make stuff. Keep making stuff. Publish your source code, even the shitty stuff. Maybe especially the shitty stuff, since that tends to be more interesting. Be ready to talk about it (humbly) during job interviews.
as well as some looser guidance and direction after losing my confidence.
Hang in there. The industry is in a fuck around phase right now where we bet that AI will be an acceptable substitute for good old fashioned recruitment.
Another “find out” phase is on the horizon - where we fall over ourselves to recruit anyone who can code to undo our stupidity before we go out of business. (Or to quickly capitalize on market gaps left by our competitors who went out of business.)
Do any of you have experience with services like this?
I’ve gotten my mentorship a few places:
- Community college classes and workshops.
- The
#pythonIRC (Internet Rely Chat) channel on FreeNode.org (it’s free) - Channels (mostly YouTube) full of free recordings of programming conference recordings.
- Networking through volunteering to teach what I know at Libraries and Makerspaces
- Occasionally taking lower paying jobs to spend time working with someone known to me to be an excellent mentor.
- Professional Programming Conferences (once I could get employers to pay my way)
It definitively feels like AI is in my way in many ways. There’s clearly a lot of recruiters using it to sort through applications (I’ve gotten more than a few rejections that start with “Sure! Here’s a polite but firm letter rejecting a job candidate.”), but also the expectation that AI can do what I’d be doing as a junior, so why bother hiring juniors?
I get the point about publishing everything and I’ve been doing that. Even my janky early Python is on my Github. It’s just frustrating that I’m not even getting the chance to discuss it with an interviewer.
I’ll look into some of those channels and such as well, thank you.
Depending on the country, your tax laws may also let you get the full cost of job related education and conferences back. I was lucky enough that my employment funded the bulk for me, but in Australia it’s a solid way to keep learning once you’re in the field you’re after.
Part of being a developer is solving your problems and reduce complexity in a very complex field. So I guess when you want to be a good dev, most of that is part of your learning experience.
To your skills. I may suggest do what you like to do. Wanna tinker with Linux and systems? C/C++ or Rust may be a good start. Webdev? Have a look at typescript. Or just do some stuff in python (it’s really fun)
If you do not know what you like. No problem, just play around with stuff and find out what you like.
If you get stuck on something, THEN is moment to reach out for help. You hardly will have to pay for advice, there is always a helpful hand if you can describe what your problem is.
I’m a bit confused. If you’re a Junior dev, don’t you have mentors in your team, in your company? They will know the projects and environments of what is needed in that environment.
“give me a specific, clear idea of what skills I might need to have” depends very much on context and goals.
They aren’t a junior dev yet. They’re looking for a job as a junior dev and have been unsuccessful at finding a job as a junior dev.
