Merit

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!

@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.

@kirk_fernandes @randolphebrown congrats on the launch!

@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.

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

@alexander_holman thanks for all of the support!

@alexander_holman thank you, and please keep being a mentor!

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

@randolphbrown @kirk_fernandes @nick_engmann1 thank you!

@edlynyuen thanks! Really appreciate all of your support!

@edlynyuen thank you and appreciate your support!

@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!

@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!

@leonardobertinelli good feedback, thanks!