[phaedrus]

The thing is, the supposed mentorship and office culture that fresh grads and neophyte employees believe they are missing largely never existed even before COVID.

- Companies just aren't interested in training people if they can hire someone trained somewhere else.

- Project-based time accounting doesn't account for time spent mentoring and transferring knowledge.

- Some older workers withhold knowledge and aren't punished for it. Some older workers share knowledge and aren't rewarded for it.

All this existed prior to COVID and expansion of work from home.

[antisthenes]

There's nothing precluding people from mentoring others over the net, through chat and video.

I see people mention in these threads that in-person mentoring and networking is somehow "just better", but no source or wide-population evidence is ever provided. It's always "trust me bro" and "it helped me", whereas the reality is a lot closer to what you described.

There are lots of companies with shitty in-office cultures where new employees get hazed and bullied, but never productively mentored. Either way, for the last 15-20 years at least, the burden of learning has been almost entirely on the employee, regardless of whatever corporate PR drones may say.