@Martin_Baadsgaard: Have anyone here ever done mentoring?
@bob.w: what kind?
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Not the kind where you are in the same company and you just get a junior under you
But more, separate from the workplace
But professional mentor within tech art
@bob.w: Not really no. I mostly just dish out questionable advice through here
@passerby: depends on the kinda of detail, i have had plenty of talks with people in person who wanted to get into games where i gave some tips or gave them some contacts
some portfolio and cv pointers (0x7fff5dfffc10
)
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Lol…
@passerby: but you will just need to expose your self to TA, and try and solve some problems that annoy you till you find exactly what area you want to learn about
@Martin_Baadsgaard: So how about longer period mentoring?
My idea mostly came about because we’re all mostly self taught or at least have strayed significantly from whatever we studied
@zuko: Mentoring someone on the side is definitely a huge commitment of time for both parties really. Given the chaos that this industry can be it doesn’t surprise me that it would be something that is pretty rare.
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Yea it might be a bad idea
@zuko: I wouldn’t say its a bad Idea… You just have to know what you are getting into.
@bob.w: I don’t necessarily say its a bad idea, but its a huge time commitment.
Depending on level of “mentorship”
@Martin_Baadsgaard: I would expect it to be a commitment, but I’m fairly good with sticking with something for a few years
@zuko: Right in an office setting its typically like an hour a day ++ possibly more due to reviews… training and overall responsibilities.
At least for me.
@passerby: yeah would find plenty of people willing to answer some questions and help you work through problems. but i don’t think you would be able to find a more directed approach
@Martin_Baadsgaard: I don’t need to mentor at work, our juniors are doing pretty damn well on their own
@bob.w: Honestly easiest way I can see to swing something like that is some kind of shared project.
@zuko: I think part of it too is … on the side there would have to be a common goal ^^^
yea exactly
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Yea, I agree
It would help alot
@zuko: Cause a big part of it is… seeing what your mentor would do to solve a shared problem realtime. That seems to drive the growth and learning process much more effectively.
@bob.w: You need some kind of common ground/context for any kind of decent directed mentorship. Otherwise one person is always trying to play catchup to sync back up with work the other person did.
@zuko: When I started in the industry I was thankfully right next to some super talented folks and was able to just piggy back off of their problem solving abilities on a daily basis.
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Yea I wouldn’t be able to help like that, it would be remotely I guess…
Also, where would one even find one to mentor
Another reason why I was thinking about it is that I am seeing alot of diversity quota hires in other industries and I’d want to see the diversity coming from merit-based hiring, but I don’t want to make it a criteria that it’s someone from a minority…
@bob.w: You can still do that kind of thing remotely. LiveShare and zoom (or some other video conference tool of choice) gets you remote pair programming
@zuko: That wasn’t for TA yet… this jerk … idk if anyone knows him… kinda was like my mentor to get me transitioned to the TA realm. @bob.w
@bob.w: Screen sharing and ranting about a shared problem is like half of mentoriship
To be fair, you really just needed a small nudge
@Martin_Baadsgaard: With a foot.
… In the back…
@zuko: Haha
@Martin_Baadsgaard:
Also career direction is a thing I have seen people struggle with
@bob.w: Career direction is a thing I struggle with. Unless that direction is “I like writing tools”
@Martin_Baadsgaard: I went to some TA meetups where some students also came by and they liked the idea of TA but for them it was this unshapeable blob of possibilities
@bob.w: Which it honestly is
@Martin_Baadsgaard: TBF that in and by itself is one of the most useful drives you can have, regardless of industry
@bob.w: Which is why nailing down a curriculum for it is tricky.
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Yea, it is!
But having someone you can ask about it and talk to about how you feel with the different disciplines seems like a nice thing
@zuko: I’ll stand by the only real reason I jumped into it as heavily as I did was because of pure frustration dealing with the tools that I had currently… and wanting something better.
@bob.w: Got at mad at tool, fixed tool. Is like 80% of our life stories
@zuko: yea… for real.
@Martin_Baadsgaard: I barely fix tools
@bob.w: The other 20% is “coworker is mad at tool, need to shut them up so I can work”
@Martin_Baadsgaard: I do more like, world building and fx and optimization
@zuko: Me “I wanna do this thing”
Broken POS Tool “You can’t”
Me “F that”
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Okay, sorry, I have to say it…
@zuko: uh oh.
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Have you noticed how easily tech artists just spiral into lamenting about what exactly their job entails?
@bob.w: yes
this is a secondary topic at most roundtables
We don’t make it easy on ourselves
@Martin_Baadsgaard: It’s the easiest conversation to trigger!
Nope
We don’t
@bob.w: We want to do a bit of everything, and its because everything needs help at some point
@zuko: I never once complained about anything
@bob.w: If interesting problems would just stay in one place, I’d have to know a lot less
No you were pretty good about not complaining, some others though…
@zuko: oh i was being sarcastic
@bob.w: Your complaining was a bit more constructive then “fuck this, its all garbage”
@zuko: That I will agree to most of the time lol
@bob.w: Plus most of the things you asked about were interesting problems in the first place, vs “I don’t like this, I’m just going to complain about everything”
@zuko: I’d throw in a pun too… that probably helped
@bob.w: That is true
@zuko: But yes… “We don’t make it easy on ourselves” is probably the best way to explain that
@bob.w: You and the whole animation room loved to torture me with those
@zuko: hehehe
im gonna walk away now for awhile good chattin
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Alright, talk to you later, cheers!
@theodox: In terms of mentoring – we’ve had some discussions on the board about trying to do something on a community wide basis, with a particular effort to help folks who don’t fit the traditional industry demographics. We already do a lot of that (it’s a big part of why the website and the online community exist in the first place) but we could do something more structured if people were interested in putting in the time.
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Well I think I’ve expressed where I stand on that initiative
@theodox: I think we do pretty good as a community on the tech side, the traditional “mentor” relationship is a bit more… intimate. I think the dividing line is between general purpose advice and very individualized involvement in a particular person’s career, which is not something we can mass produce
They’re both good, but we don’t really have anything solid around the true mentorship side
The big thing I think will be recruiting people on the mentor side who can give it the level of attention it deserves
@bob.w: Yeah, an interesting middle ground would be some kind of “community workshops”, or “tools jams” or equally ridiculous events
@Martin_Baadsgaard: I am not thinking it has to be traditional mentoring, just not one that is tied to the current position and company one is in.
That was just the point of departure for my train of thought
But given that there is still no way of getting a “tech art education” it would be nice to help people along
@theodox: A lot of time traditional mentoring is just about having somebody to bounce ideas off of – brainstorming career moves, gut-checking solutions, that sort of thing. It’s nice to have somebody you can just get some disinterested advice from in new situations.
We could probably also commission some written stuff from people in different sub-disciplines on basic career expectations and stuff like that…
@Martin_Baadsgaard: Yea that’s the sort of stuff I’d imagine doing.