Just wondering what sorts of training processes you guys have experienced or seen. I’m pretty aggravated currently. I’m mostly being left alone with a task. My ‘mentor’ is one of those arrogant guys who thinks his shit doesn’t stink. He’s always telling me to ask him questions and when I do I never hear back. Thankfully, he’s not my actual boss. We have a Google hangout to display what we’re doing every Tuesday. Today, in ‘front’ of everyone he told me ‘that sucks; on a scale of 1 to 10, that’s a 1’. Unfortunately, my boss wasn’t on. I’ve been doing this a total of 7 months, largely self taught, just using internet resources. It took some restraint not to tell him to Fuck off, that I’m not a fucking designer, that I don’t have any fucking style requirements, just functional. Fortunately, I work at a large company where I will probably have that opportunity to move around. Thanks for listening, guys.
This seems like something you should bring up with actual boss. If this person is supposed to be mentoring, and hasn’t been doing that for 7 months now, he’s probably costing the company. You could probably have saved a decent chunk of time if he had actually showed you the ropes instead.
Thanks for the feedback. He started our helping quite a bit, maybe the first few months or so then it tapered off to almost none. He’s not ‘officially’ my mentor or anything, but I think that’s what my boss wanted him to be. He’s basically the only programmer excluding myself, regardless. It’s still frustrating, but I think my boss understands how deep the learning curve is. I don’t think my job is in jeopardy by any means no matter how often my brain says it is. Problem is lack of resources. Everyone’s stretched thin, including myself. I’ve had to learn so many different languages and technologies that I’m barely useful in any circumstance; sort of a less than jack of all trades. But hey, as long as I’m getting paid, right?
It seems like your company really needs to hire more people to help with programming-related tasks. Unfortunately I have no advice on how to bring that up with your bosses.
Thanks for sharing.
I definitely wouldn’t call this person a “Mentor”. We each have different strengths and need to be supportive of each other.
I’d second the idea of a conversation with your manager. Preferably out of the office if possible. Regular one-on-ones are critical in my opinion. This is typically done by asking your manager if they “have some time for coffee”.