Mentorship: how to find it, and how to get value from it.

Freelancing, digital marketing, SEO, WordPress, copywriting and AI automation taught in Urdu by Hisham Sarwar, one of the best known voices on online work in Pakistan. Alongside skills courses, he answers viewers' questions about earning online, clients and personal discipline in a mentor's tone. It suits Pakistani students and graduates who want to start earning online and prefer learning in Urdu.

• Career

The Linux Foundation's platform for paid, structured mentorships on open source projects, including the cloud native projects run by CNCF. You apply to a specific project, complete any tasks the mentors set, and if selected you work on real issues with an experienced maintainer for a fixed term. It suits students and early career developers who want open source experience with guidance instead of guessing alone.

• Career
• Job search
• Cloud

Career growth advice for software engineers from Steve Huynh, a former Amazon Principal Software Engineer with nearly 20 years of experience. Videos cover performance reviews, promotion, high-value skills, communication and how the AI era is changing engineering careers, including live coaching sessions with engineers moving from mid-level to senior and senior to staff. It suits working engineers who want to grow faster and understand how promotion really works.

• Career
• Leadership

One-to-one coaching with the author of the best-selling Grokking courses, a tech lead whose background spans Meta, Microsoft and Hulu, where he built and scaled distributed systems and data storage infrastructure. Sessions cover system design, data structures and algorithms, interview strategy and career direction. It suits engineers who have prepared seriously and want an expert read on what is still holding them back.

• Career
• Job search
• System design

Coding and system design coaching with Rafay Abbasi, a co-founder of the platform and former senior development lead at Microsoft (Azure Storage) and software engineer lead at Meta, where he built large-scale systems. Sessions focus on distributed systems, scalable architecture, data structures and algorithms, and interview strategy. It suits senior engineers who keep reaching onsite rounds without converting them, or whose designs stay at the level of boxes and arrows.

• Career
• Job search
• System design

A roster of interview coaches with backgrounds at companies such as Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Snap, Cloudflare and Goldman Sachs, each bookable for coding, system design or broader interview and career coaching. You choose your coach from their profile rather than being assigned one. It suits candidates who want a coach matched to a specific company, level or weakness before a real interview loop.

• Career
• Job search

Live 60-minute mock interviews with engineers from large tech companies, covering system design, coding, behavioural rounds or a target company's format, with a verbal debrief and a prioritised list of fixes and drills. System design mocks are listed from $159, or $215 with an interviewer from your target company. It suits candidates with a real interview coming up who have never rehearsed under realistic, observed conditions.

• Career
• Job search
• System design

A free, step-by-step readiness guide with three tracks: coding (revise data structures, learn patterns, practise the right problems, simulate real conditions, take mocks), system design (understand the interview, learn the building blocks, study real walkthroughs, take mocks) and behavioural. Each step links to the relevant reading, course or mock interview. It suits anyone about to start preparing who wants a clear order of work before buying or booking anything.

• Career
• Job search

Free one-to-one sessions with Tauseef Fayyaz for approved Sefism members, booked from the Sefism dashboard: a 45-minute mentorship call, a 30-minute session for final-year students and new graduates, hour-long sessions on career guidance and personal branding, and a 45-minute LinkedIn optimisation session. It suits engineers stuck on a decision (which offer, whether to switch, what to learn next) and students planning their first job.

• Career
• Job search

A mentorship platform where experienced professionals in engineering, design, product, data and marketing offer one-to-one online sessions. ADPList says it has more than 36,000 mentors and 400,000 members across 160+ countries. Getting started now includes one free session. It suits students and early-career engineers who have never had a mentor and want an outside view on a career decision, a portfolio or job search.

• Career
• Job search

A weekly advice podcast in which two experienced software developers, Dave Smith and Jamison Dance, answer two listener questions an episode about the non-technical side of the job: difficult managers and teammates, promotions, job hunting and interviewing, quitting, and negotiating pay. It has passed 500 episodes. It suits engineers at any stage who want practical, often funny advice on workplace situations they cannot easily discuss at work.

• Career

An open source, MIT licensed list of hundreds of questions for one to one meetings, grouped into themes such as career development, job satisfaction, work life balance, team and company, and feedback for the manager. Managers use it to run better one to ones, and people being managed can use it to make the meeting worth their own time instead of another status update.

• Career
• Leadership

Sefism's free Discord server, an open chat community for questions about software careers, learning paths, final-year projects and the Sefism libraries of resources, roadmaps and project ideas. It suits students and engineers who prefer quick conversation to long reading, want a second opinion on a course or project scope, or want to stay accountable alongside other people working towards similar goals.

• Career

Mayuko Inoue worked for six years as an iOS engineer at Intuit, Patreon and Netflix before becoming a full time creator, and her channel shares honest reflections on working in tech: starting out, switching careers, getting along at work and avoiding burnout. Uploads are now occasional, but the archive remains a calm, mentor style companion. It suits beginners, career switchers and new engineers.

• Career

Free AI courses, freelancing guidance and career mentoring from Irfan Malik, CEO of Xeven Solutions in Pakistan, taught mostly in Urdu. The channel hosts his free Artificial Intelligence Basic and Advance courses alongside playlists on communication skills, Upwork, client management and moving from freelancing to founding a company. It suits Pakistani students and graduates who want a career path into AI and tech, explained in their own language.

• Career
• AI

A marketplace for long-term paid mentorship in software engineering, product, design and related fields. Mentors offer monthly plans that combine a set number of calls with messaging between them, and each profile shows the mentor's background, specialities and reviews. It suits engineers with a goal that takes months, such as moving to senior, switching specialisation or landing a first role abroad, who want someone to hold them accountable.

• Career

A marketplace for live one-to-one programming help from vetted developers, used when you are stuck on a specific technical problem such as a bug, a failing deployment or unfamiliar code. Mentors set their own rates; sessions have a 15-minute minimum and are then billed per minute, plus a service fee. It also offers code review and freelance work. It suits developers who have lost hours to a problem a specialist could solve quickly.

• Career

A creator platform for charging for your time and expertise from one shareable link: bookable one to one calls, priority messages, webinars and digital products, with scheduling and payments handled for you. It is useful for engineers with an audience whose inbox is full of requests for advice, and who want to mentor sustainably instead of either ignoring people or giving away every evening.

• Career

A widely cited 2010 essay by Michael Lopp (Rands in Repose) on running one-on-ones. It argues that every one-on-one turns out to be one of three conversations: an update, a vent or a disaster, and explains how to recognise which one you are in from the opening question and what to do in each. It takes about fifteen minutes and suits new managers, tech leads and anyone who finds their one-on-ones pointless.

• Career
• Leadership

A career book by Shawn "swyx" Wang about the parts of a software career that are not code: learning in public, choosing what to learn, finding mentors and sponsors, negotiating and moving from junior to senior. It suits engineers in their first few years who do solid work that nobody notices. The full edition can be read free online, with ebook, audio and print versions also offered.

• Career
• Job search

A four course Coursera specialisation from UC Davis, taught by Kris Plachy, on the practical side of coaching people: setting expectations, spotting performance issues, asking rather than telling, and holding conversations that change behaviour. It is aimed at new managers and tech leads, and is useful to any engineer who mentors juniors and suspects they do it by instinct. Full access needs a Coursera subscription, with financial aid available.

• Career
• Leadership