Ask HN: How to find an effective career coach?

94 points

8 years ago

After 11 years of development career as an individual contributor in some large companies, and team lead for start-up teams, I recently landed in a team-lead position in a company filled with hot political issues, backstabbing, favouritism, tremendous timeline pressures for modernization with little business benefit, executive/director level leaders who have no knowledge of internal working of the system, all experienced folks leaving after change in said execs/director, eccentricity at some levels, and so on. It is such a classic case of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon for me that threads like [1] and [2] resonate a great deal.

I do not want to turn away from this ecosystem for now mostly because I want to learn how to survive in such a political environment, and partly because if this modernization project gets delivered whenever it is, it will be a very good learning experience for me.

While official and unofficial mentorship is an option from inside the companies, I am not sure if I can cover softer issues like dealing with certain individuals in the mentorship session.

So, I wanted to ask you guys how can I find and approach an effective career coach or a mentor (potentially outside of my company). Any suggestions are more than welcome.

Thanks.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17511850 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17510670

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