Merit

Impactful career mentorship for tech workers

5.0•2 reviews•

294 followers

Impactful career mentorship for tech workers

5.0•2 reviews•

294 followers

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Support for launching and growing a tech career for underrepresented folks. Connect with mentors in product management, software engineering, or product design.

Free

Launch tags:Social Impact•Diversity & Inclusion•Career

Launch Team

Sunlitt

Hey @randolphebrown, congrats on making this a reality, I think it's a truly needed service for many people. However, it feels kinda strange that you only accept mentees from US and Canada, given that these mentorships will be conducted online regardless of location. I can't think of many practical reasons that explain this restriction, tech work is the same everywhere and any advice valid in north america would be valid in other places. I feel this creates an artificial (unnecessary?) barrier of entry which is strange for a service that wants to democratize something. Also, the wording of the explanation given doesn’t feel very inclusive: “We're focused on creating the best experience possible for everyone on the site. Right now that means we're focused on folks based in the US or Canada that work in software engineering, product design, or product management. This focus lets us ensure high quality career conversations on our site.” How excluding people from other parts of the world ensure high quality conversations? If anything it would create a more diverse community with all kinds of perspectives, stories and insights. I applaud the idea and I'm sure it's making an impact, but maybe you can give more attention to this specific aspect because at the moment it feels a bit off.

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

@leonardobertinelli thanks for this question! We want to ensure our mentors and members can have great sessions that are meaningful and impactful. That requires context so currently, we support mentorship in US and Canada. We chose this set of roles and locations because we felt that this would create the most shared initial context. While we think - and want! - Merit to be used by anyone one day, we had to start somewhere. More specifically - how the job market functions and cultural norms differ considerably the wider the set of folks using it. In prior iterations, we avoided these types of barriers but found that it caused a worst experience at this stage, and at worst, could expose folks to harmful experiences. For the job market part, we found that mentors oftentimes felt they did not have relevant experience to help. As a personal example, while I know a lot about how tech hiring works in the US, I couldn't tell you the first thing about how it works in Europe, and I feel like I would actively cause harm to try to give advice on that matter given how little I know. For the cultural norms part, it's well documented that the way people communicate (even when using the same language) varies widely across different cultures. When creating a product that makes new connections, these differences can lead to misunderstandings, and at worst lead to people feeling insulted. Similar to the prior, we felt that opening it up too far left us causing more harm than good at our stage/size as a very small team working on a very hard problem. To summarize - while we want to open it up to more roles and locations one day, we have found so far that to do so will require a focused effort to ensure that we continue making a meaningful and enjoyable experience for everyone involved. We are working hard to get there!

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4yr ago

Sunlitt

@randolphebrown thank you for the insightful answer, everything is more clear now. I think you should make the wording and explanation on your website closer to this reasoning, to ensure that the right message comes across when explaining this issue!

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

@leonardobertinelli good feedback, thanks!

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4yr ago

Congrats on the launch! For anyone who's new here, I've been on multiple mentorship platforms, and it's a hard problem to solve. Every platform has tried to solve this by paying mentors or passing on the cost to employers, and it's led to a cesspool of self-promotional platforms. Merit is different — their structure creates meaningful mentor/mentee relationships, and it's been the best way to pay it forward as a mentor, while getting to know other awesome folks in tech. It seems simple to say, but my interactions on Merit are purposeful, and I'm excited to see how they go.

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

@arj_shiv thanks for all of the support and being a mentor! And yes, this is exactly what we're going for. The goal is to create purposeful professional conversations. By finding a way to align incentives for mentors and mentees we believe this is the best way to enable that for everyone.

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

@arj_shiv thank you! Thanks for being a great mentor and example to others :)

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

Hey Product Hunt - excited to be here! My co-founder @kirk_fernandes and I started Merit because we believe that mentorship is the most effective way to build your network and career. I previously built a diversity recruiting platform and saw many people leave promising jobs and opportunities because they didn’t know where to go next and didn’t have the support system to help guide them. Kirk previously was a product manager and leader at big tech companies and startups. He saw that the most effective way to expand people’s careers was to broaden their network and horizons. We started working together because we thought that the best way to improve tech was give everyone—especially those in tech without an existing network—a way to grow their craft, career, and confidence. You can read more about how we got started on our blog: https://blog.get-merit.com/the-s... 🤝 We connect curious, eager members with mentors who want to impact the tech industry for the better. Our vision is a real meritocracy for the tech industry, and we’ll get there, one conversation at a time. 📹 For those looking to learn, Merit is an easy way to connect with senior mentors in the field for 1:1 video calls. In seconds, you can browse topics and mentors to: - Navigate a promotion - Job search - Career switch - Learn skills 🤲 And for mentors, Merit is an easy way to: - Hone your own skills by teaching others - Broaden and diversify your network - Give back to tech at large We make it easy to help relevant people while putting in place controls so your conversations remain focused. We feel we are are best positioned to help the careers of those working in product management, product design, or software engineering in the US and Canada. We’re looking to expand to additional markets in the future. Happy to answer any questions! Best, Randy

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4yr ago

Flow Club

@kirk_fernandes @randolphebrown congrats on the launch!

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4yr ago

Canua

Looks great except for one bit about mentors not getting anything in return for their work. I get it would be hard to create a monetization scheme for it, but it looks to me that a big part of the value this app has comes from them, which means their participation is a core component for you system to work and that can hardly be maintained on prestige alone. All the best!

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

Hey! @luis_carlos_moyano_medina - thanks for the thoughts! This is actually a common misconception. The mentors get a lot of real experience and broaden their network in a way that directly improves their current jobs and future job prospects: - They use it to learn new skills by helping people with real problems and challenges - Diversify their own network beyond folks at their job and existing referrals - Learn about real people and problems beyond their own Many of our mentors are senior individual contributors, who are interested in exploring management in a lightweight manner, or early managers who are looking to meet more folks and learn about more real-world scenarios. The experience of mentoring others directly helps them learn these skills and apply them to their real life. Hope this answers your question!

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4yr ago

@luis_carlos_moyano_medina @randolphebrown I second this! Putting aside the "paying it forward", which also contributes to why I am on Merit, someone you mentor now might be an excellent hire in the future or might be a lead in a job search or a connection to solve a problem.

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4yr ago

Amazing product that helped catapult my career after moving to NYC and going full-remote in 2019. The conversations that I had with @randolphbrown and @kirk_fernandes helped me cement what sort of engineer I wanted to be and the explorations I needed to continue in regarding my career path. Definitely recommend this platform to both prospective mentees as well as mentors who want to share their career insights!

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

@randolphbrown @kirk_fernandes @nick_engmann1 thanks bud, love it so much that we were able to help. Appreciate all of the support!

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

@randolphbrown @kirk_fernandes @nick_engmann1 thank you!

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4yr ago

Orbital Bootcamp

Congrats Kirk and Randy! It’s a fantastic product for people looking to learn how to transition into different tech roles or to level up. Excited for your launch!

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

@edlynyuen thanks! Really appreciate all of your support!

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

@edlynyuen thank you and appreciate your support!

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4yr ago

Love the concept, and love the idea of early career intervention to meaningfully change trajectories. I’ve often felt that the highest impact I’ve had on the people that I’ve served as a mentor for is ongoing contact as people develop through their early career and beyond. However, I tend to lose touch with them—either due to forgetfulness or bandwidth. How can Merit help me keep those relationships healthy and thriving over time?

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4yr ago

Merit

Maker

@andrewychoi thanks for the support! And great question! How we think about networking in general: we think the best way to network is to have specific tactical questions/challenges that you're trying to navigate. Helping someone through a specific outcome will naturally lead to clear follow-ups and specific touchpoints. And after that first interaction, it's more likely you'll have ways to follow up in the future. On Merit, we try to facilitate this through specific conversation topics. Mentors can list topics such as, "resume reviews" or "asking for a promotion", and these specific topics can help start the sequence of events like the above. Hope this answers your question!

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4yr ago

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