I’m working with a group of interns on one of my teams right now. In a meeting recently, I offered to spend a small amount of 1-1 time with any of them, on general career advice (as a side note: don’t expect that I can lay out your career path for you - no one can. Everyone’s career is different, and mostly what I can tell people is what I write here).
I think it's everybody's job to make sure their time is well spent.
Mentorship is not as popular as it should be, and many people don't understand how to prepare well and what to expect. Especially given that all mentors are different and they all would appreciate different things for "getting something back."
I think a mentor should take care of the "homework" definition to make sure all expectations are met. I.e., provide a short README with how to prepare, what to expect, examples of what's a good topic and what's a bad topic. That way people know what to expect and what is expected of them.
Sometimes people who need advice face a problem, and they don't know what the goal should be, and what are the right questions. The best they can say is "I don't want to have that problem." In most of the cases, this is where mentors can make the most impact by helping the person explore possible paths forward and ways to set the goal, or even make the goal more ambitious.
Very familiar! My email is easy to find on the web so I get a lot of random requests. Career advice is common, but there are also many other categories, like "newbie found a bug in Python", "newbie has a severe criticism of Python", "please help me with my homework", and crackpot conspiracy theories -- a subcategory of the latter is "I have an idea for solving a major world problem and I need you to promote it / write the app for me". Very rarely are the requests motivating me to answer. Worse, sometimes when I do reply I get a response back along the likes of "Oh my! The creator of Python answered my email! I never expected you'd write back!"
I think it's everybody's job to make sure their time is well spent.
Mentorship is not as popular as it should be, and many people don't understand how to prepare well and what to expect. Especially given that all mentors are different and they all would appreciate different things for "getting something back."
I think a mentor should take care of the "homework" definition to make sure all expectations are met. I.e., provide a short README with how to prepare, what to expect, examples of what's a good topic and what's a bad topic. That way people know what to expect and what is expected of them.
Sometimes people who need advice face a problem, and they don't know what the goal should be, and what are the right questions. The best they can say is "I don't want to have that problem." In most of the cases, this is where mentors can make the most impact by helping the person explore possible paths forward and ways to set the goal, or even make the goal more ambitious.
Very familiar! My email is easy to find on the web so I get a lot of random requests. Career advice is common, but there are also many other categories, like "newbie found a bug in Python", "newbie has a severe criticism of Python", "please help me with my homework", and crackpot conspiracy theories -- a subcategory of the latter is "I have an idea for solving a major world problem and I need you to promote it / write the app for me". Very rarely are the requests motivating me to answer. Worse, sometimes when I do reply I get a response back along the likes of "Oh my! The creator of Python answered my email! I never expected you'd write back!"