[skiltz]

Not having a decent mentor. Self taught working as a solo developer. Don't know what I don't know. If I had someone to peer review code or bounce idea's off then I could have progressed a lot faster. If I could start again I would join a development team and learn from developers with a lot more experience.

[angelofm]

I cannot upvote this enough, I am in the same situation, whatever you do try to always work with people smarter than you that you can learn from, you will get better so much faster.

[payamb]

I'm same and now I'm in middle of changing my job from full time to contracting and this makes me wonder if I should go work in better team or I should stick to the more money I can make from contracting. Any advice ?

[jtchang]

I've thought of this a bit in the context of more senior developers. One of the questions I asked my friend was "who the heck do I go to when I am the senior architect/dev and need help with X technology?"

I wonder if there is a site or product out there that lets me help others with X technology and I some sort of karma/credit and other people can help me with some tech they know really well. Maybe I should build it :)

[twoquestions]

I keep hearing about how great mentors are, but what's in it for the mentor? Why should someone who knows what they're doing provide such a valuable service for someone who can't pay them back?

In older times, tradespeople literally got a live-in servant for the trouble of teaching them, but other than college tuition I haven't heard of a good compensation model for mentors.

[NetStrikeForce]

In many companies that's part of the job description (to be a mentor for others), so I'd say there's money and career in it.