Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

I ramble on for thousands of words on the realization that I need mentors, not just mentees.

Oct 16, 2026 Update: I have a mentor at work, and he’s been incredibly helpful! I need to lean on that relationship more. All I need now is multiple mentors. Hmmmm. —

I’m realizing I’m at a point in my career where I need a mentor for my career, and maybe one for my life. I have a career coach and a therapist, but they’re not the same thing as a mentor. I’ve never had one, though!

It’s overwhelming. Where do I find a mentor, how do I run the relationship to make the most out of it? I’m stuck.

I want to learn networking tips and techniques, but I also want to focus on the mental aspect of it, since I don’t have a mentor myself. I envy people that have mentors who set mentees up with connections and get them in the right direction. I’ve never had a mentor who’s an employee of the same corporation! I have never had the guidance and assistance people with mentors get. Therapist and coaches are different – they can’t set up meetings and connections, or give you company-specific advice, directions, guidance. So, I need a mentor, from somwhere, somehow, who can help me figure things out. Not to be too greedy, but I could do with multiple mentors, actually…

Yeah, I would have a grand time, with a couple of mentors. I would have a mentor for my career who’d help me prepare for new roles, and help me figure out workplace politics. I could have a mentor who could help me generate new opportunities or think through a hard problem. There could be a mentorwho helps me casually and provides wisdom, and working knowledge in their field. It’d be cool.

How to get there?

I have given networking tips to my mentees recently. Quite often, they do it better than what I’ve been doing recently! They’re reaching out to people in their entire company. The first call with internal networking is the “getting to know you” situation where you understand, and get the vibe of the other person. You gotta understand them enough to set up a future agenda. Do I havehave the fervor to just reach out to people, though? Reaching out to people for casual networking as a software engineer is challenging, there’s not a lot of agenda items since your work is so narrow. And even if you’re high enough, engineers quite rarely get to set the organizational agenda worth cold-networking around.

I do talk about community building and networking a lot, perhaps as much as I’m doing it. Maybe there’s opportunities to meet people who like discussing those topics? Maybe I should make a list of initiatives and causes I’m excited about, write on them, and do a sales pitch to find potential pentors. A reach-out for potential collaboration, maybe. I haven’t really professionaly collaborated with folks outside my company, and main focus area within my job. Had I done such reachouts, I might have had people I could reach out to.

Maybe my mentors and the people in my professional network don’t have to be ahead of me in careerwise. They can just be better at whatever I’m interested in improving. Simply reaching out to them and hanging out might be a good idea for the time-being. Feels like maybe I’m making a big deal out of something that should be so simple.

Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to talk to a bunch of people from different job classes, in different verticals, maybe even in different industries, to get a sense of what other people do. I’m curious about what other jobs are, and what everybody does on a daily-basis, particularly with the ai-related disruptions happening everywhere. Maybe my angle could be that I’m evaluating a horizontal move? The truth is, outside my close friends, I don’t know anybody in ‘the industry’ at all – any industry. What do they do in their jobs, how do they do it, what do they struggle with, what are the problems worth solving, what motivates them, what does a capable or competent person in their field behave like, what makes them good at their job? Those questions feel like a good starting point.

I should fan out on the possibilities, what if it can be anybody. It could be a content writer, a technical writer, a product manager, marketing manager, project manager, director, salesperson or it could be a marketing person. I should ask them enough questions to understand what they’re up to and how they work and what the problems in their industry are and what they feel the right approach to solving it is. I want to understand how they are embedded in their job, career and their industry. It doesn’t have to be a Machiavellian operation intended to conquer the Earth. Networking shouldn’t be too initmidating.

It’s just a space to give me an excuse to have a broader understanding of some field, or assorted fields. I’d get people to reach out to and ask questions from people within the industry. It’s maybe a little like making new professional friends – or acquaintances – except you talk to them about workstuff, and rarely about personal stuff. Doesn’t feel like a big deal to be.

As a mentor who has told others to figure this out, it’s a bit unfortunate that I haven’t explored this much. Such a silly situation to find myself in.