[OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing?

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 08 April 2014 20:23:05 Chris Angelico did opine:

> On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 1:14 AM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> > Ditto, but make it 65 years in electronics for me.
> > 
> >> -People make you feel like an idiot when you ask a question and they
> >> intimidate you so you don't come back and ask more.
> > 
> > That generally only happens a couple times, I am good at making them
> > eat their words.
> 
> So you play the curmudgeon. That's a perfectly viable role... for
> someone who's been doing stuff for 65 years. For someone straight out
> of school, not so much. Even for someone with a few years' experience,
> trying to bite back like that is very risky.
> 
At that point, neither of those two gents had a good idea what I could do 
as I had only drove in on a motorcycle to interview for the job about 3 
weeks before, so I could have been out the door, but watching the owner, I 
could see the wheels turning, in about 1.5 seconds he nodded his head in my 
direction and changed the subject.  But because the owner could see I 
wasn't kidding, it became just one more clue that eventually lead to that 
GM being let go.

I became his goto man even after I had retired and we spent many a pleasant 
flight in his twin piston pounder Cessna as I was being hauled someplace to 
put a technical "fire" out.  Telling war stories, I mentioned that another 
GM, who in the end was given 5 minutes to get his things as the sheriff was 
going to escort him out as he had been cooking the books, but he had made 
threats to fire me on several occasions.  The owner (who has since passed) 
looked me right in the eye & said he couldn't have done it because he would 
never get permissions from me.

> >> -People are super patient and helpful and they answer all your
> >> questions and go beyond the call of duty to help you.
> > 
> > A utopia very few will ever find.
> 
> In corporate, yes, it's rare. But it's a lot less rare in open source
> projects. I could go into my theories as to why, but it'd make for a
> long post.

No doubt, unfortunately, I haven't been that involved with open source 
other than as a confirmed user since 1997.  Born 40 years too soon I guess. 
I grew up building my stuff using vacuum tubes.

Its quite a treat watching you guys call some students bluff over doing his 
homework for him.  That isn't how you learn how to do it, and we both 
damned well know it.  But generally, you do so with a sense of humor to go 
with the elbow in the ribs.  Just watching that interplay has been 
educational in and by itself. ;-)  You, as John Glenn once said, do good 
work.

> ChrisA


Cheers, Gene
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