As a developer with 20 years of experience, Aaron made the tough switch from Oracle proprietary software to a modern web stack a few years ago. He stumbled upon Codementor when he needed help badly in a short amount of time, and he lacked the understanding of even what to search for.
To Aaron, Codementor is “a real game changer”, as it allows him to take on projects and succeed with technologies he had never touched before. It has also reinvigorated and turbo-charged his learning.
How Have You Used Codementor?
I have used Codementor to ramp up for interviews. I mined the internet and compiled a list of 50 ruby and rails questions and and spent hours asking these questions to various mentors and getting all kinds of great explanations and resources.
I have also used Codementor for help with my daily work. I am a backend guy who was recently thrust into a full stack job that included a lot of Backbone and Marionette, which I had never even heard of. I was on a 6-month contract to hire and wasn’t picking up the new stuff fast enough, so I was continually delivering late. I found Yuriy on Codementor and started working with him up to an hour a day. He showed me so much and made so much come clear.
The best part is I was no longer afraid of hitting a problem that I couldn’t solve. There would be no more long afternoons of furiously searching Stack Overflow, and no more impending dread that if I didn’t figure it out I was going to lose my job. He really saved me.
After that, I vowed to stop wasting time on problems I can’t fix and just get help. This has allowed me to be more efficient, much faster, and ultimately pick up extra side work.
I took the same route when interviewing for another full-stack position with a React front-end, which I have also never looked at. I went straight to Codementor to get a partner on my side to supervise and inform my React journey so I won’t sound like a numskull when my interview comes next week. If I do get the job, I will tap that same person to help me heavily with my front end work until over time I can do more and more of it on my own.
The money that I pay to my mentors is negligible in the big scheme of things. I will gladly give up a couple hours of my pay to avoid days of wasted effort.
Can you please describe in details a few sessions you’ve had?
I had a session where I was up against a deadline to create a presentation on mobile design. I worked with my mentor for a couple of hours to finish out the content, then he suggested moving it from powerpoint to reveal.js (because it looks awesome). This was just one more of the many tools I had never heard of until my mentor suggested it.
I’ve had sessions with mentors who were in the top 1% of all stack overflow answerers. I’ve had instant access to some of the best practitioners of various technologies that you can find.
One time I had a particularly good but expensive guy who turned out to be unfamiliar with the particular JavaScript framework I was working with. We decided to try the session anyway. Every time there was something that he didn’t know and had to look up, he would pause the session while he did the research for me. By the end of the session we had been on the phone for 2 hours and he charged me for 45 minutes, very cool guy.
What do you like the most about Codementor and would you recommend Codementor to others?
I love that I can get instant relief with any of my issues without having to wait for a friend to make time for me. I like that I can apply and take jobs where I don’t know the entire stack.
With Codementor, I will never again have to be afraid of getting hopelessly stuck on something that I don’t understand and can’t figure out.
