[hibikir]

Agreed, but this is a cultural issue, which has a lot to do with management constraints. I've worked at places where everyone is teaching everyone else at all times, and therefore where everyone grows, year to year. But in those places, there was very little practical competition among developers. They where either all consultants, or they expected their results to have more to do with team performance vs individual performance.

On the opposite situation, when programmers are stack ranked, or where it's otherwise clear that they should be playing zero sum games, nobody asks questions, and nobody answers them if they are asked. Tasks that are important enough to lead to chances of advancement are fought over. Everyone wants to build infrastructure for other teams, but using other team's infrastructure is admitting that they are going to get the up level and not you. In any of those world, every programmer is an island, and people get better far slower.

Only in the middle, where there are few incentives, one can change a culture from one side to the other. In those cases, it's easier the more senior you are: No better way to get juniors to ask for help when they see seniors asking for help in public. Many a senior engineer is not socially aware enough to try techniques like that though.