Why I won’t be participating in ADPList’s controversial feature
Don’t break the “pay it forward” chain.
Over a year ago, I began mentoring UX researchers on ADPList.
Before I joined the platform, I would occasionally have conversations with folks who went out of their comfort zone to connect (as strangers) with me on LinkedIn and make a direct request to talk.
The magic of ADPList is that it takes the need for courage out of the equation. Like similar volunteer organizations, it gives folks who are still early in their careers access to a catalog of mentors who are further along and willing to help. Unlike other mentoring platforms, there’s no subscription fee. And there’s no need to ask for a “date” — the platform lets one choose a convenient time to meet directly from whatever availability the mentor has set on their page.
But what’s in it for the mentors? Aside from the satisfaction of having done a good deed, you can get a lot out of it:
- The excitement of meeting others and learning from their experiences
- Greater empathy for juniors as you recall similar challenges you’ve faced
- Clearer thinking on the topics you get asked about
- Questions from mentees become prompts or ideas for scaling help to a larger audience (e.g. in writing)
- Occasional public praise that can really make your day (e.g. this comment, below)
But beer money wasn’t one of the potential benefits — until recently.
How does tipping a mentor work?
In February 2022, ADPList began rolling out a new feature, called “Support with Coffee,” which allows mentors to receive tips. These optional donations can be as low as $5 (USD), and the company takes no commission. They say mentees requested the feature so that they could express their gratitude without a complex, third-party workaround.
The announcement generated a ton of excitement. Many drew a comparison with in-person networking, where it’s common practice to buy coffee for the person traveling to meet you, as a favor and thank-you. Some mentors have argued that a productive mentoring relationship requires some skin in the game. Some have pledged to donate their tips to charity. Others applauded the decision to keep it optional.
But others in the community were less enthusiastic. Even an unobtrusive and optional ask for cash felt “icky” to some. Others argued that allowing mentees to review and privately message mentors already satisfies the need to express gratitude. And for my part, I won’t be participating, for two reasons:
It’s better to pay it forward
The drive for reciprocity is one of the strongest effects in psychology.
It happens all the time in the Starbucks Drive Thru. A customer, paying for their order, asks to pay as well for the customer in line behind them. On learning the news, the next customer does the same. The chain can go on for hundreds of orders.
When someone does you a good turn, you get a strong urge to pay it back in some way. In a mentorship relationship, there’s often no way in the short term for a mentee to provide an equivalent value to the mentor. The only way to relieve this psychological burden is to pay it forward to someone else, whether now or in the future. Indeed, part of the reason I and many others mentor is to return some of the benefits we’ve received in our career, when others invested their time and energy in helping us.
Tipping provides a more immediate way to reciprocate, potentially breaking many chains of paying it forward down the line to future UX practitioners.
If tipping becomes expected, we’ll leave folks behind
Wherever tipping happens, it starts out as optional.
But once it’s established, there develops a strong social norm to do it. For now, mentors must opt-in to receive tips, but the option to say “no thanks” didn’t stop a strong tipping culture from growing in countries like my home, the US. And here, it’s a huge faux pas to stiff the bartender or server.
In practice, this means that people will feel compelled to tip to receive better mentorship, whether or not it truly affects its quality. They may end up feeling entitled to more of the mentor’s time, or to inside advantages like referrals. And mentors may feel compelled to give these, thanks to the drive to reciprocate. For those of lesser means, a common norm of tipping could become another barrier entry. They’ll think twice about scheduling too many sessions at an expected “price” of $5 a pop.
Ultimately, a culture of expected tips could undermine ADPList’s mission to democratize mentorship for all.
TL;DR
ADPList is a great tool: it makes mentorship accessible to more people than ever before. But despite my enthusiasm for the platform, I won’t be participating in its new optional tipping feature, for two reasons:
- We have a natural impulse to return favors. If you can relieve that pressure by buying a coffee, you’ll be less inclined to one day pay it forward.
- People with the means to tip may get more or better mentorship than those without, giving advantages to those who are already privileged.
I hope that more mentors will join me in this. If tipping becomes the new norm in our field, I worry there is very little that any one of us will gain, and much that all of us will lose.
In the meantime, if you want to talk research — with no strings attached! — you know where to find me.
Thanks to fellow mentors Ines Anić, Roberta Dombrowski, and Carl Pearson, whose comments on an earlier draft have greatly improved this article.
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