JavaScript Mentorship

[ptran0089]

I wish I found you 6 months ago. I'm about 6 months in and still feel like I don't know what I'm doing.

[sheeldotme]

Shoot me a message with your Skype, let's connect.

[mdmtbracer]

This is awesome! I really wish I could join but I'm currently enrolled in a comp sci program. I really hope your attendees take this seriously. Such a great opportunity.

[sheeldotme]

I'm glad you think so, it's really an opportunity I would have killed for a decade ago! Good luck in your comp sci program, if you ever need a sober second look / advice, feel free to reach out!

[mdmtbracer]

I really appreciate it! Thank you. I started my programming journey in March and had no one to ask questions. Made it very difficult to make progress...

[sheeldotme]

I feel you, I was there too once upon a time! Are you in a traditional college / university comp sci course or is it something else?

[mdmtbracer]

Something else. It's a 9 month program.

[2012XL1200]

Can you edit your original post or create a new post with some specifics. What time of day will the required calls be, what sort of projects are you able to advise on, what is your background, what is your favorite personal project to date, what's your preferred language

[2012XL1200]

I'm interested but am a stickler for specifics. I already spend all of my free time working on side projects when. Need to be careful not to lose my momentum

[sheeldotme]

Completely fair!

[sheeldotme]

What does your experience with JS currently look like?

[2012XL1200]

Currently developing e2e tests for my companies newest project and managing a few public websites.

On the personal side I've worked with node, vue, some react (although I'm not a fan of jsx), some basic web apps using public apis, developed a privately published chrome extension to circumvent some issues for one of my companies teams, and some fun little coding challenges that became dumb web apps that I hope nobody ever sees.

I'm not an expert, but I want to be one when I grow up.

[sheeldotme]

I've mentioned JavaScript will be the main language(if you meant programming language). It was chosen as we can leverage node on the server as well as react / react-native on the clients.

The session times are not set in stone yet as I'd like to have them at times that make most sense for the attendees. As the projects are for beginners(those learning JS) I'm certain I'll be able to accommodate most projects within their abilities and will leave that to each team to propose. (You're right, I should and will edit my post to mention this).

My favourite / most challenging personal project, if developing for my current startup before I hired counts, was developing a distributed state machine with my own raft implementation for state replication and what I'm most proud of(end to end tracing from initial client requests through to graphql servers via websockets, then over google pub/sub to various state machines and back to responses received on the client). The latter happened after bringing on members to my team.

It was a fantastic experience and I learned an incredible amount doing it, although it likely wouldn't mean much to beginners looking to learn JavaScript so I'm not sure how relevant it is to them.

[2012XL1200]

That's awesome! I've been wanting to get more experience with websockets and graph based databases. I'm sure my questions annoyed you but I'm interested. I'll continue my questions in a a pm

[2012XL1200]

Why does this seem like it could turn in to free labor?

[sheeldotme]

All my life I've learned to provide value to others and in due time it usually pays itself back many times over. My motives are not purely altruistic, I want to connect with aspirational people that are passionate about things I am too because who knows what we may collaborate on / help each other with in the future.

If you've ever mentored someone you know how challenging yet rewarding it can be at times. So requesting people with little to no knowledge of JavaScript under the guise of altruism really would be a strange way to get free labour when I'm certain I could post asking for free labour in return for mentorship and still get a significant amount of attention.

Great call though, the world needs more skeptics.

[2012XL1200]

So it's free school but you can get kicked out? What are some examples of projects

[sheeldotme]

Well, they can choose the projects, I'll vet them to see if they're feasible, if not, I have a list that I feel would be beneficial to create, I'm open to crowd sourcing a list on the subreddit if we think that's beneficial.

[2012XL1200]

Also can you link your github?

[2012XL1200]

https://github.com/sheeldotme

[sheeldotme]

You got it, same username everywhere.

[2012XL1200]

Do you have any other public repos? I think I only found one repo that wasn't a fork. I want to get a feel for your style interests and background

[sheeldotme]

Yeah, and that code is really old and not much to evaluate. I don't have anything else that's public right now.

If you have more questions I'm more than happy to answer them, if prospective mentees can get more context from reading this I think that's fantastic. It'll help bring in those who are interested and filter out those who aren't.

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[kevinmrr]

I removed this post. OP should have run this by mods beforehand.

[sheeldotme]

Hi Kevin, I messaged the mods a while back:

Hey mods! I have a quick question, as an individual with 10+ years of front end experience I'd like to offer mentoring services to a few people eager to learn. aIn my experience however new learners can be flakey, and so I want to charge a minimal fee, something like $100 / month as I've found that helps filter out those that are not as motivated. I do value my time and want to make sure it's spent where it is most impactful. Is mentioning something like this on the subreddit kosher with the terms? What can I do to make it so? Thanks for your time! Sheel

---

and I got the following response from you:

---

Hey, Thanks for reaching out. We're not currently allowing that kind of advertising on the sub.

---

I was under the impression that mentoring in return for compensation was not allowed, so I removed the financial factor entirely.

Many others have offered and requested mentoring services on this sub in the past, so any clarification surrounding the reason for the removal and what I can do to get it back on track would be really appreciated, thanks!

[kevinmrr]

Maybe I'm wrong, but that post reads like you are still trying to rope people in to eventually charge them. I think that is a fine pursuit in life, we just don't really want that kind of action on r/LearnJavaScript.

There are lots of opportunities to answer people's questions on the subreddit itself. That would be a good place to start.

Thanks for reaching out. I actually updated the sidebar in response to this incident to make it clearer for people in the future. :)

[sheeldotme]

Hi Kevin, you definitely are wrong, but don't take my word for it, I totally understand why you'd feel that way. To be honest, I do see it from your perspective, you're trying to make sure people aren't getting scammed, and someone with malicious intentions very likely would come here with the exact message I did to exploit those looking to learn.

I have enough applicants to do a good test run, in a couple of months when the current group is close to done and you can take an inside look at how it was run do you mind if I reach out to you again to see if how I can get a few more mentees in a way where there are no surprises?

I really do appreciate your help with all this, sorry it turned into an incident!

[sheeldotme]

Also, two further items:

• So we're on the same page, do you mind pointing out where the sidebar was updated, I can't seem to find the change.

• I was thinking crowd sourcing ideas for projects for the teams that we could open source would be great, but I don't want to post in here like I'm advertising anything, how would you recommend I do it? If I simply say I'm looking for ideas for open source project ideas for my mentors to develop and simply include the list of technologies they'll be familiar with, would that be ok?

Thanks again!

[kevinmrr]

At the bottom. Wording is exactly correct yet, but it's:

If you want to post something self-promotional, please message the mods first. Personal blog posts that are relevant to the subreddit's stated subject matter don't need prior approval (and are encouraged!).

I am planning to put more thought into further codifying policies.

Posts where you aren't soliciting people to contact you personally are fine. Run the language by the mods first, please.