I Gave Away $0 Tech Mentorships... And Regretted It!
John from Titan of Tech addresses a concerning trend
observed on Reddit and LinkedIn, where individuals entering the cybersecurity
and technology sectors believe they are entitled to free mentorship from more
senior professionals. He argues against the notion that successful individuals
are obligated to provide free guidance simply due to their position. The script
outlines the reasons why this mindset is flawed, including the misconception
that teaching or mentorship should not come at a cost, and the reality that
many professionals already pay for training in various forms. Further, John
shares personal experiences to illustrate that voluntary mentorship often goes
unappreciated or unutilized, reinforcing his stance that true learning requires
personal investment and engagement. He concludes by encouraging individuals to
value paid resources for their structured learning paths and to shed the
entitlement mentality towards free mentorship.
00:00 Introduction: Addressing a Troubling Trend in Tech Mentorship
00:55 Debunking the Myth: The Expectation of Free Mentorship
01:57 The Value of Teaching and Learning in Tech
02:33 Challenging the Free Resource Mentality
03:31 Personal Experiences with Mentoring in Tech
06:44 The Reality of Investing in Your Professional Growth
09:28 Evaluating Paid vs. Free Learning Resources
11:02 Conclusion: Taking Ownership of Your Professional Development
Transcript
Hey, what's up?
Speaker:Everybody?
Speaker:John here with Titan of tech got another video for you today on a trend that I
Speaker:have seen to be a little bit troubling, particularly on Reddit and LinkedIn.
Speaker:And so you may ask, what is this troubling trend that I have been
Speaker:seeing for several months now?
Speaker:And that is this idea that anybody that is exposed to.
Speaker:Aspiring to be a cyber security professional or technology
Speaker:professional professional or owed a mentor, not only just owed a mentor.
Speaker:They're owed a mentor for free.
Speaker:And that anybody that happens to be a senior leader or somebody with
Speaker:senior experience, maybe they've got a lot of technical experience.
Speaker:That they are required to become a mentor.
Speaker:And I find that to be the stupidest junk out there when you start
Speaker:thinking about it critically, and you start thinking about it logically.
Speaker:So let's jump into this real quick.
Speaker:Why is this a stupid trend?
Speaker:And of course, coming from social media, there's all kinds of stuff
Speaker:out there that are stupid trends.
Speaker:But, uh, this has been primarily stuff I've seen, like I said, in
Speaker:Reddit and LinkedIn that people were complaining that these were juniors.
Speaker:They were newer to the field of technology, maybe even cyber
Speaker:security that, you know, Senior senior leaders, senior technical
Speaker:practitioners within their organization.
Speaker:We're not mentoring them.
Speaker:And then you would see the flip side argument of other people
Speaker:that were senior leaders.
Speaker:And they wanted to be voices.
Speaker:I think they were trying to build their brand saying that.
Speaker:Technology professionals should never have to pay to be, to have a mentor.
Speaker:Everything should be free and just never, if you need training, nothing,
Speaker:there's just so much free stuff out there that you never pay for it.
Speaker:So what are all of their reasons?
Speaker:One, it's a scam.
Speaker:Doers do.
Speaker:They don't teach that is just crazy.
Speaker:If you want to the best way for you to learn something is to teach it.
Speaker:It causes you to organize your thoughts in a logical way.
Speaker:You can kind of I see where some of your blind spots are where some of your
Speaker:weaknesses are for you to be a teacher.
Speaker:All you have to do is be 1 step ahead of the person that you're teaching.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:There's no, there's no great formula for anybody that actually
Speaker:wants to become a teacher.
Speaker:We all have different experiences.
Speaker:We all have different ways that we may view the world.
Speaker:And you start putting that together.
Speaker:You've got something that you could probably teach somebody else.
Speaker:The other 1 is there's so many free resources out there,
Speaker:and there's a reason to pay.
Speaker:Yes, there are tons of free resources out there.
Speaker:We'll go through some of that toward the end of the video.
Speaker:But a lot of the times with free resources.
Speaker:They're unorganized.
Speaker:I'll call it just in time learning.
Speaker:Uh, don't have that on the, on the slide here, but just in time learning
Speaker:where you're kind of just looking up the pieces to fill gaps here and there, but
Speaker:usually when you are paying for a course, it can be a little bit more organized.
Speaker:Also, with free resources, you're really not probably getting any
Speaker:feedback or questions if you're downloading somebody else's paper
Speaker:questions, things of that nature.
Speaker:And the other reason they say not to pay is it's just your duty.
Speaker:It's your duty as a professional.
Speaker:The further up the ladder you go, you have to get back.
Speaker:Well, says who?
Speaker:Who says that I am required because I have been in the field for 25 or 30
Speaker:years to sit down and mentor somebody that's just entering the industry?
Speaker:I've had many, many times over my career where I have absolutely mentored other
Speaker:people, people that have shown an interest in what they're doing, whether this has
Speaker:been just kind of on my own, uh, you know, one on one questions, or if I was
Speaker:running another department or a team for another organization, I would have
Speaker:formalized training sessions where we would go do whiteboard for for that team.
Speaker:That was something that I took upon myself.
Speaker:Nobody made me do it and then why I was complaining.
Speaker:But the flip side of that is, I can tell you right now out of the dozens
Speaker:and dozens and dozens of people that I've had training sessions with or quote
Speaker:unquote mentoring sessions with only 2 of it ever 2 of them ever took it serious.
Speaker:There was a situation some years back.
Speaker:Where we had a network administrator.
Speaker:He wanted to go up the ranks.
Speaker:He wanted to learn some more of the, the tools that made the system run.
Speaker:And 1 of the ones that we had in there was a email filtering system.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Everybody's familiar with that.
Speaker:Try to block the spam, stop some of the phishing attempts, things of that nature.
Speaker:I spent.
Speaker:An hour to two hours in one training session, just going over the fundamentals,
Speaker:knowingly expect nobody's going to catch everything in one training session,
Speaker:but we would walk through how this functions work, how a whitelist works,
Speaker:how the blacklist works, how you can set up different filtering to try to
Speaker:become a little bit more fine tune and granular to block the bad emails from
Speaker:hitting the end user to stop them from not getting ransomware everywhere.
Speaker:So the thing that stuck out with me to this day was after spending, I'll
Speaker:say, an hour and a half, I'll split the difference somewhere between an hour
Speaker:and 2 hours with them going over how the program functioned the very next day.
Speaker:I didn't get a question on, like, how does this button work?
Speaker:Or how do you do this?
Speaker:I legitimately got a question that said, Hey, do we have a program
Speaker:that, that does email spam filtering?
Speaker:Are you, are you kidding me?
Speaker:What did we do for 90 minutes yesterday, except go through that in detail.
Speaker:And instead of asking a fine tuning question or follow up, you actually
Speaker:asked me that we have the software.
Speaker:This is the type of stuff that, you know, if you don't take pride
Speaker:and ownership in the work that you do and want to get better.
Speaker:I can't drag you along for it.
Speaker:It's not my duty to drag you along.
Speaker:. I have so many people that will ask a question that net will never respond.
Speaker:I've got so many people that will sit there and say, Hey,
Speaker:do you have a connection?
Speaker:I'm looking for a job, you know, a new job.
Speaker:Do you know anybody that does X, Y, Z?
Speaker:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:Go, go here and go apply or go hit them up, you know, and then maybe a week later.
Speaker:Hey, did you go do that?
Speaker:I either get no response.
Speaker:Or they went, no, I didn't do it.
Speaker:Don't waste my time.
Speaker:It is not my duty to drag you along to where you say you want to go.
Speaker:If you're not willing to actually put in the work.
Speaker:Now, if you're not familiar with this already and put a little critical
Speaker:thinking out there after going through what people are complaining about saying
Speaker:that they're not getting mentored and that you shouldn't do it because it's
Speaker:free or it's my duty to train you just to take you under my wing just because
Speaker:just because that's what the mantra is.
Speaker:You're already paying for mentorship.
Speaker:You're already paying for training in a lot of cases.
Speaker:Do you have a college degree?
Speaker:Are you working toward a college degree?
Speaker:Have you taken a certification or a boot camp?
Speaker:Have you taken test prep software for a certification?
Speaker:How about a test prep book?
Speaker:You ever pay to go to a conference and listen to lectures or speeches?
Speaker:Do you, do you already have certifications and you're part of professional chapters,
Speaker:you've got clubs, you've got part of those groups that you've paid to become a member
Speaker:of, to have access to those other members?
Speaker:Guess what?
Speaker:That's training and mentorship.
Speaker:That stuff's not free.
Speaker:Yes, you can do some of those things.
Speaker:You can go take a certification for free and self study with other material.
Speaker:You're probably paying for some of this stuff.
Speaker:And that's what it is.
Speaker:It's somebody else's knowledge in a different format than having that
Speaker:1 to 1 access to someone like me.
Speaker:The other thing to this is not only are you paying for training, you're probably,
Speaker:you're getting paid for your knowledge.
Speaker:The stuff that everybody says for you not to pay for is probably
Speaker:the exact same you're getting paid for in your day to day job.
Speaker:Have you ever worked a help desk or know somebody that
Speaker:works like a tier one help desk?
Speaker:And what do they do all day long?
Speaker:They're just answering technical support questions, which comes
Speaker:from their knowledge or somebody else's knowledge put in a book.
Speaker:That's accessible to them.
Speaker:Are you a consultant?
Speaker:Are you a strategic consultant?
Speaker:That is selling your expertise to another organization?
Speaker:Then what is the difference between selling your expertise?
Speaker:To somebody else that wants to do the job that you're doing nothing.
Speaker:Do you get any sort of salary based on the info?
Speaker:You know, probably whether you again cybersecurity or graphics designer,
Speaker:you're an author you're a writer Whatever it is a technical writer a
Speaker:lot of your experience You're getting a salary based on the information, you
Speaker:know, and the more information, you know The more experience you gather you
Speaker:typically get a bigger salary for it
Speaker:All this to say, I'm tired of seeing these posts on there, uh,
Speaker:that paying for a coach is a scam.
Speaker:I have bought many, many courses from other, from other people because I
Speaker:wanted to achieve or try to achieve the results that they have, that they
Speaker:have earned through their career.
Speaker:I said earned, not deserved.
Speaker:They earned it.
Speaker:So one of the things with paying, let's say you want to do a, a self
Speaker:directed course that somebody has.
Speaker:You've got skin in the game.
Speaker:It's not just handed to you.
Speaker:We live in a capitalist United States here.
Speaker:Putting money, putting money where your mouth is, is how you show
Speaker:you're serious about something.
Speaker:And the information that you usually get from paid resources, Is better organized.
Speaker:It covers more than just that 1 little question where you're filling in a gap.
Speaker:You're going to go through a training course.
Speaker:That's foundational and that builds upon itself.
Speaker:So you get better and better and better and you don't have blind
Speaker:gaps just trying to go out there.
Speaker:If you happen to take a course where you have access, whether it's in a
Speaker:group setting, Or maybe it's one on one time with a particular coach,
Speaker:there will be more invested in you.
Speaker:As I told you earlier, I've had maybe two people in 25 years actually take
Speaker:the advice I have seriously because it was freely given, kind of put a little
Speaker:bit more impact on something when you've had to pay for that level of impact.
Speaker:But with anything, you have to evaluate what you're buying before you do.
Speaker:What are you getting with what it is?
Speaker:The more direct contact that you usually have with a key professional, the more
Speaker:expensive it's going to be something in a group setting where you there's a
Speaker:bunch of people that has access at one time where you guys meet once a week.
Speaker:Like a, like a degree program or a certification boot camp, if that's
Speaker:in a smaller timeframe, it's going to be probably a little cheaper than one
Speaker:on one specialized time versus a self directed course where you maybe, maybe
Speaker:you get to write an email question, maybe you have no access either, but
Speaker:it's just a better organized program.
Speaker:So don't sit there and listen to the people that say, you should never pay
Speaker:for anything or that you're owed it.
Speaker:You're not owed it.
Speaker:You haven't done anything special.
Speaker:You got to sit there and be willing to invest yourself and not think somebody
Speaker:else is just going to spoon feed.
Speaker:Now, 1 of the things for those that are still stuck on.
Speaker:Well, there's so much free stuff.
Speaker:You're, you're right.
Speaker:There is a ton of free stuff out there and the coach or mentor or
Speaker:somebody that's trying to build a brand or build a business on the side.
Speaker:Of the knowledge that they have probably already have a bunch of free information.
Speaker:That's out there for you to utilize.
Speaker:Now, whether it's YouTube videos, whether it's blogs, whether it's
Speaker:podcast, maybe they even have micro courses that step you through a very
Speaker:small subset of a larger problem.
Speaker:They may have white papers.
Speaker:You've got the library.
Speaker:There's tons of free resources out there.
Speaker:If you choose to go that route,
Speaker:and that's a way if you're seriously considering, hey, I need to sit there
Speaker:and have a resource available to me to answer my questions to help me
Speaker:take my career from here to here.
Speaker:That you can evaluate the information that they've got and make sure 1, that
Speaker:you think it's accurate and 2, that it fits your learning style and that
Speaker:their personality is somebody that will help you achieve your next level.
Speaker:But do me a favor drop any notion that you're owed anything and
Speaker:drop any of the notion that you see from the self righteous
Speaker:people on LinkedIn or or read it.
Speaker:That think that it's, it's somebody else's duty to spoon feed you and give
Speaker:you the wrong conception of the idea.
Speaker:It's not until the next one.
