thank you! I'll reach out.

well this is embarrassing.

For others reading, this is a Ask HN on the same topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9400288

> well this is embarrassing

No worries. I tried to only add more content :-)

Thanks for the advice. Being stuck in roughly my current skill level is why I want to make more connections with people more experienced / senior to me. I have poor management skills and that doesn't look like a path I'd do well on.

Happy to chat if you're looking for any support or advice.

>>Search one with experienced engineers then (?).

That is the plan but that's a much slower process because of vesting, intertia etc.

>> so someone younger than you for example

That has been my approach so far but it feels like that we've sort of taught each other most of what our individual strengths were.

This looks great. Thanks! I should also put up something like this.

Thanks for the advice.

>> Knowing what to want to know seems much harder.

This is so true. I do want to work mostly on distributed systems but every once in a while I get AI envy seeing all the amazing progress being made in the field.

As a suggestion for finding mentors, maybe just track down some senior software engineers at OpenAI and the like and drop them a cold email explaining that you're curious and would love some time to chat about how <some new tool they're working on> works?

If you email ten, at least five will probably ignore you, three will say they're too busy, but two might be up for a chat. You lose nothing by asking, and if someone's "offended" or something because they received a cold email... well, that's their problem.

That's the start of a mentoring relationship. The first two probably won't be good AI mentors but you'll have learned something cool, and maybe they're curious about distributed systems. But maybe the second or third or fourth time you repeat this process, you find someone you really click with.

> If you email ten, at least five will probably ignore you, three will say they're too busy, but two might be up for a chat.

I've been on the receiving end of those emails a small handful of times due to a previous job, and I've been thrilled to receive them every time. While none of them turned into a longer-term relationship, I would have been happy if they had. I think in general, (non-famous) people are less busy than people assume and would love to talk about things they're passionate about. Don't track down the project lead; instead go talk to the anonymous people a step or two down the ladder.

Ideally yes. But I work with other engineers who are much less experienced than I am. The other experienced engineers work on different projects.