Before you book

Find out whether you need mentoring at all.

Not everybody needs this kind of mentoring, and I do not work with everybody.

But if something about your career has felt off for a while, do not dismiss it just because you cannot yet prove why. Maybe you keep trying to get the opportunity you want, but it never comes. Maybe too much of your work stays below what you can actually do. Maybe you deliver strong work, hear positive feedback, and nothing changes in your scope, responsibility, pay, or progression. Or maybe you can point to real business impact, yet the answer about the next level is still “not yet.”

Data Scientists and AI/ML professionals are trained to trust evidence, so we can be suspicious of gut feelings. But do not treat the feeling as a conclusion. Treat it as a signal that something deserves a closer look. Ignoring a persistent signal simply because you do not yet understand its cause would be malpractice in data science.

Here are the questions I would ask myself before considering mentoring:

• What about your work or career feels most frustrating, disappointing, or stuck right now? How long have you felt that something is not moving the way you want? Is this a temporary period, or a pattern you have seen before? 
•  When you picture your career three years from now, do you see a place you would deliberately choose, or simply where your current track will take you? 
• If nothing changed at work for another two years, how would you feel about that? 
• What would another year on the same track cost you, in income, scope, learning, or work you would rather be doing? 
• If you stay on the current track, what are you most afraid may never happen? 
• What have you already tried to change about your situation, and what happened? 
• What are you still waiting for your manager, company, or somebody else to change for you? 
• When did your responsibility last grow, and what made that happen? 
• Have you clearly articulated what you want next, first to yourself and then with your manager—and do you have their support and a concrete agreement on what would show you are ready? 
• Think about your last three important pieces of work. What business decision, action, or result was each one supposed to influence? 
• What actually changed because of your work? Not what you delivered or what was praised, but what the business did differently. 
• When your work created value, was that value actually used by the business? 
• Was the value clear enough that your stakeholders and manager could explain what changed and what your contribution was? 
• Did your strongest work lead to more trust, better opportunities, broader responsibility, or stronger career progress? If not, do you understand why? 
• Would you like to become better at turning your work into business value that gets used, is understood, and helps you earn greater trust and stronger opportunities?

Do not look for the correct answers. Listen to your own reaction and notice its intensity. These questions are designed to turn vague unease into something you can observe: the pain of your current situation, your desire for something different, your fear of changing, and your fear of staying where you are. 

If the questions leave you emotionally flat, you may be genuinely fine where you are, or this may simply not be the right moment. In that case I would rather you kept your afternoon. But if one of them produces discomfort, urgency, resistance, or a strong pull toward change, there is probably something worth examining more closely. That is when it makes sense to talk, so we can diagnose the situation together and work out whether this is the right kind of support.