“Will you be my mentor?”
By: Timi Ajiboye
Tags: Rant, Software Development, Programming Tips, Random, Mentorship

Timi Ajiboye: I want us to talk about the problem with people asking us to “mentor” them. I don’t want it to seem like I’m carrying shoulder but people do not realize how weird it is.

Ire Aderinokun: Yeah, it’s a difficult topic but needs to be discussed.

Timi Ajiboye: I know why it makes me uncomfortable, but why does it make you feel somehow?

Ire Aderinokun: Maybe it’s because of the way I personally learned, but I didn’t have a “mentor”. So the first problem is, I don’t really even understand what people want when they ask for that.

Timi Ajiboye: I personally think it’s lazy. And they try to guilt trip you by saying they admire your work and want to be like you — which makes me genuinely glad. I will not deny that I like the fact that people like what I do. But we have blogs, we have open source projects and if people have specific technical questions to ask, I feel like they’ll just comment on a post or mention on me on Twitter with a stack trace.

I don’t understand them wanting me to leave my work to come and do unpaid mentorship.

I don’t think people who actually want to go through the hard process of learning would send vague “mentor me” messages like that. They’ll do research, they’ll make mistakes and they’ll ask specific technical questions if they’re stuck.

You have tons of comments on your blog with people asking you actual questions. And you’ve written 100 articles on FE development for all to read for free (with code examples). So what else do they expect from you?

Ire Aderinokun: I don’t know if I would call it “lazy”. I think you’re right in that they are asking for something unrealistic. Like you said, we have blogs, GitHub projects, talks, etc. So if they really wanted to learn from our work, they could do so with all of those resources. That’s why, when they ask to mentor them, it makes me feel like what they are asking is for me to take time out of my day and check on their progress, tell them what to learn, send them resources, etc.

I think what they don’t understand is that we are already doing that stuff through our blogs, Twitter, talks. They don’t really understand that their sending a private message, asking to be mentored, is asking us to perform essentially a part-time job.

It’s not like we don’t want to help. That’s exactly why we have our blogs. But yeah, it’s just a weird position to be put in. What can you say to someone who says they admire your work and want to be like you then asks you to take a vested interest in their career (which will actually be at a time cost to your own)?

Timi Ajiboye: You’re actually showing exactly why it’s lazy.

Ire Aderinokun: LOL

Timi Ajiboye: Let me explain yeah.

So they know Ire Aderinokun has about a 100 posts on her blog. Technical, detailed blog posts (with custom diagrams) and often with actual working code examples meticulously written to ease the process of understanding.

Writing these articles take hours.

They can comment on these blog posts to ask questions. They can post issues on Github for explanations. They also know you go for talks & conferences when you can. They know they can attend these talks. They know you share slides of talks. (100+ page slides of carefully made presentations to make understanding easier).

They know all of this.

Lastly, they’re aware that the internet is an infinite pool of learning resources. Both free and paid. There’s Codecademy, Udacity, etc. Very good stuff that’s free. But they want you to take time out of your work, the work you’re using to eat, despite all the teaching you’ve doing already, to become their code nanny. And they’re not even ready to do you the courtesy of doing some self-learning/research so they can ask you specific questions that will shorten the amount of time you have to spend answering them.

You know what’s worse? I can’t even pinpoint any particular gain from mentoring (those kind of) people. The best kind of people to mentor are the ones who are already ready to work to differentiate themselves. That way you might gain an efficient (lower-level) colleague at work. But that’s someone that’s willing to learn enough to go through the job interview process, someone that shows willingness to scour the internet for solutions.

I mean, one can get internship positions in organisations that will do proper mentoring if they put in the work to qualify.

Because there’s no such thing as a finished programmer. The best programmers are the ones that just want to keep learning. And are not expecting someone to teach & monitor them for FREE. It’s selfish and lazy.

Ire Aderinokun: You’re definitely right. The only reason I don’t necessarily agree that its “selfish and lazy” is because I don’t even think they are thinking about it this far. I feel like, they see someone they like the work of and want to do similar things. And, since we are both quite accessible (particularly to the Nigerian tech scene), they think that being mentored is a way to reach that goal. They don’t necessarily sit and think that what they are doing is very one-sided.

Timi Ajiboye: Not thinking about the impact of what you’re doing is lazy. And we’re all lazy at different points in time.

Ire Aderinokun: Lol, I guess that’s true. One reason it particularly bothers me is because this is probably the one career in which you kinda have to learn to figure stuff out on your own. You will run into bugs every day no matter how senior you are, and you can’t have the mentality that you need a mentor to solve your problems for you.

As we mentioned, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking for help. If you’re actually stuck on some bug, there are many people you can ask (forums, GitHub issues, us, etc). But at least have tried to search Google for a solution first. Because when you come to us, the first thing we will do is probably search on Google too.

Even though we may have more experience, we don’t know everything either. From the most senior developer to the interns, we are all just Googling stuff.

Timi Ajiboye: Exactly. I know it seems like I’m harping on this thing, but doesn’t it seem a little bit lazy to want someone to do the Googling for you? I mean, I Google shit all the time. All the time. I Google how to do rails migrations every damn time.

Ire Aderinokun: I think that part of the problem is that they don’t realize that we’re all just Googling shit.

Timi Ajiboye: Nah, I’ve told you the problem but you might knock me if I say it again.

Ire Aderinokun: Lmao if you say lazy one more time…

Timi Ajiboye: The thing is, I’m willing to help, I think I’ve shown that. But I’m not willing to help someone who is not willing to help themselves. I’m not willing to spend time “mentoring” someone like I’m some programming Mr Miyagi. Because unlike in Karate Kid, I have to work, tweet crap and just generally live my own life. In the end, somebody that’s waiting for mentorship will not be a good person to mentor anyway, both of you will just waste your time.

Ire Aderinokun: Yup. I know it sounds like “humble brag”, but people need to understand what they are actually asking, and why it’s weird for us to receive requests like that.

Side note, there may be something to be said about the fact that we have only ever received such requests from Nigerians. Is there?

Timi Ajiboye: Maybe, I mean, that’s true. We’ve only gotten such uncomfortable, hard-to-reply messages from Nigerians. All the non-Nigerian people that I’ve had any form of correspondence with concerning this career have asked pretty specific technical questions.

Nigerians generally have this “My helper go show up one dey come help me” mentality, but that’s a rant for another day.

Ire Aderinokun: Lol yeah. We may also just be more accessible to them since we live here.

Timi Ajiboye: Nah, you get more correspondence from non-Nigerians anyway.

Ire Aderinokun: Anyway, that’s all I really have to say. I hope people who are really serious about learning programming take this and learn from it. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help, but think about the other person too when you’re asking for something more than that.

Timi Ajiboye: Emphasis on “more than that”. In fact in caps — MORE THAN THAT.