[Waterluvian]

I had a mentor at my last job who clearly really didn't want to be one. It was to the point that I would sit paralyzed behind him, loathing turning around to get his help. In all fairness, I had yet to learn a good way to get help without interrupting his hard work. I'm not sure he ever fully knew he was my mentor, but without his help I was completely blocked on making any progress on the deep-end project I was thrown into.

What we both needed was the company setting very clear, explicit expectations. "X is your mentor. X's main job is to mentor you and help you swim in this deep end." Though I think the entire company was learning a ton of stuff at that phase.

Thanks X for all your tolerance over those years. You have no idea how much you saved me, despite my loathing to bother you yet again.

[saghm]

> What we both needed was the company setting very clear, explicit expectations. "X is your mentor. X's main job is to mentor you and help you swim in this deep end." Though I think the entire company was learning a ton of stuff at that phase.

It's been a while since I've mentored someone, but that was always one of the things I made sure to mention in my first conversation with any interns/new grads I'd mentor: "While you're here, mentoring you is the highest priority thing for me to do. If there are ever any times when I have something so time sensitive that it would take priority over answering your questions, I will explicitly let you know. Otherwise, always assume that it's okay to ask me something, because if for some reason I can't answer and you don't know that, it's my fault for not telling you." It helped that the company where I worked at the time had very explicit time periods where someone was considered a "new grad" versus a full team member (since they actually would rotate on 3 teams before ending up on one of them full time), so this strategy might not work as well in places where the expectations for mentors are not laid out as well, but I honestly think that it will almost always be the best strategy to just be open and communicative with anyone you're mentoring. Mentees are just people like anyone else, and them being inexperienced as engineers doesn't make them any less able to understand clearly communicated guidelines, and if you need to adjust the guidelines as you go, there's no reason they can't understand that too.

[nopmike]

> "X is your mentor. X's main job is to mentor you and help you swim in this deep end."

I don't think that will ever happen, nor should it. No ones main job should be to mentor someone else. The best teams all help each other. Early and often.

[bcrl]

A good work environment will see only good from developers asking each other questions to gain a better understanding of the complex systems being worked on. I was pretty senior in one of my last few roles, and I regularly asked questions of the folks that had been building the system before me. And I always made time to support other devs (and QA and support folks) that came to ask me questions, be it about code I wrote, general questions about technical things or whatever. Being supportive to each other is what made it a really fun place to work at.

[Waterluvian]

I think your opinion is strongly founded on a bunch of personal assumptions given how little information was provided. Be careful not to miss the point by fixating on details.

I’ve seen a lot of bad engineers and most of them undervalue helping others. Good engineering leads know that they can write more code by supporting everyone than by writing code themselves. Definitely a form of mentorship. I’ve seen some that are almost 100% mentors.

[TideAd]

I have a couple quasi-mentors like this. I'm stuck between feeling grateful for what they taught me (a whole lot) and feeling absolutely sure that I will never be that neglectful to a junior dev in my own career as they were with me.