Oh come on. Plenty of us here never had any form of direct mentorship at work or otherwise. It's not unusual when you pick up the trade as a hobby in your teens, and in terms of programming and technical skills (which is what we're discussing here), you stopped being a junior before getting your first job.
Myself, I learned from many folks on IRC and ol' phpBB boards, and I helped others on IRC and said phpBB boards in return; almost all of that was before graduating. That, and books, lots of books, and even more time spent just reading code online and writing my own. None of that hardly qualifies as "mentoring".
>you stopped being a junior before getting your first job.
No, that was your hubris thinking you had the chops. We didn’t hire you because of your skills, we hired you because of your age and aptitude to learn. That’s how college recruitment works. If you didn’t go that route, you were still looked at as a junior. Your ego clouds your view.
> If you didn’t go that route, you were still looked at as a junior. Your ego clouds your view.
your ego clouds your response.
He wasn't talking about if he was hired into a jr role, he was talking about the competency, experience, and skills acquired from the years of writing code for passion. If he could write better code, or debug problems faster than your average jr level employee.
Not everyone fits into the tiny bucket you've imagined must hold everyone. The answer could easily be, we hired you because you ticked all the boxes, but no one doing the interview could tell they were completely out classed.
If you’re employed, you’re in a bucket. It’s a cell on a spreadsheet somewhere.
I’ve yet to find a junior dev that had more skills than a junior dev. I’ve seen them try… but they are still a junior dev. If you aren’t a junior dev, then you aren’t. Mentorship has nothing to do with what bucket you’re in.
However, there are specific job duties of senior and higher that are beyond just writing code. One of them is making more seniors. There’s only one way to do that efficiently. Learning. And while you can go read a manual on how to put a Ferrari together, wouldn’t you want to work with a mechanic who has already made dozens of them?
> I’ve yet to find a junior dev that had more skills than a junior dev. I’ve seen them try… [...] If you aren’t a junior dev, then you aren’t.
Funny, I've met plenty of jr devs that were way more competent than some of their peers who've been at the exact same company/division for 4+ years. Which was my point. The world is bigger than you can imagine. There are people with experiences that you couldn't describe, but you write in a way that feels like you want to dismiss them outright as impossible, which does a disservice to everyone involved.
> And while you can go read a manual on how to put a Ferrari together, wouldn’t you want to work with a mechanic who has already made dozens of them?
> Why do we reject help?
I feel like you and I are arguing past each other. To reuse your example: There are plenty of people who have never spent time with a mechanic, but have been spent so much time pouring over every technical manual for the car, that they can out perform guys with years working for Ferrari, while that guy working for Farrari has mentors, he still has to ask for help with most things, and needs to look up a number of the specs. But the person who exclusively taught himself, can do many of the same tasks blindfolded.
No one has said they don't want mentorship, but many were never in a position to have that advantage. But you said that if they think aquired their skills on their own, they need to seek therapy. WTF?
I'm sure you've met plenty of narcissists who have had mentors, but claim they haven't. But it's wrong, insulting and pretty toxic to lump everyone into that same group.
>but you write in a way that feels like you want to dismiss them outright as impossible
I write in a way from wisdom, from experience, the likes of which you describe as indescribable.
Ever heard the term “It takes a village”? You had mentors that you refuse to acknowledge.
>There are plenty of people who have never spent time with a mechanic, but have been spent so much time pouring over every technical manual for the car, that they can out perform guys with years working for Ferrari, while that guy working for Farrari has mentors, he still has to ask for help with most things, and needs to look up a number of the specs.
Except that guy in his garage isn’t working for BMW or Mercedes, he’s a hobbyist that has learned all about his vehicle. There’s a difference. A minor one, but it’s there. The Ferrari mechanic works on ALL Ferrari. Now, you’ll say, but there’s a car guy that can… I’ll save you the trouble. That guy isn’t applying to junior roles, isn’t asking for mentorship, he’s just a car guy. A passion about cars.
Then you’ll say: exactly my point about engineering. Which is right, I never said that it wasn’t possible that someone could selflessly throw hours away teaching themselves through trial, error, and tutorials. There are many paths. What I’m saying is, stop wasting hours and open your mouth and ask for help. There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers. Every scientific breakthrough starts with a question. Every idiot response starts with an answer. Mentorship is asking for guidance with the wisdom to know the difference.
Everyone is looked at as a young person when they are young. I've definitely had "junior" colleagues that "got it" better than my 50yo colleagues. It's possible I shouldn't say that outloud, because skilled youngsters have a tendency to misidentify themselves as being part of that set while the wise youngsters have a tendency to *underestimate* their own capability or insight. But I don't think you can make that same assumption about a senior thinking back to their early years.
I desperately wish, to this day, that I had been in the position to receive mentorship. I basically hang out on HN as a way to gather it where I can. Attended engineering meetups when I was younger as well. But I never had the benefit of working with engineers senior to myself. I was a junior "business employed person" but when you need to make a roof you do what you can and learn the hard way even if there's no other humans to show you how to make a proper roof. Luckily, you can receive mentorship not just online, but through books, or even just studying the craft of others...but you take what you can get.
Receiving mentorship is such a gift, and as I approach the end of my career, I am still hungry for it, and harboring some degree of wistful envy for those that receive mentorship as an engineer. I've had many great mentors, but my for the most part, engineering mentors have never seen my face, heard my voice, or known my name, and certainly not for the first decade of my professional career as a software developer, where I didn't have any other developers to work with.
You see, the issue is you’re framing your mentorship (or lack thereof) on a very specific topic, that you are already well versed in. Why would someone give you advice in your field? You probably already know…
Mentorship is about more than just “don’t use strings directly in your squeal”, it’s about navigating the organization. Filing proper TPS reports. Encouraging refactoring. Having empathy when shit goes south. Coffee talks. Hikes. Walks. Getting to know them as a person and giving them life advice.
My best mentor taught me, if you keep looking under rocks, all you’ll find is dirt. Look up.
Of course. And I thought I acknowledged that mentorship is many things and there are many things that we need to grow as individuals. I've had a lot of great mentors in my life.
I still think you've missed the point. You can be grateful for the many gifts you've received and still wish to have had engineering guidance from a trusted mentor. There is not enough time in a life to go down every single rabbit hole; it's nice to have experienced people accurately point out where the rabbit holes are. Non-engineers are not equipped to help spot engineering rabbit holes; they might even tell you that engineering itself is ultimately a pointless rabbit hole.
But even then...that's just my own experience and my own wishes for my past self. I try to give what I wish I had had, of course.. think that's what drives most mentorship, and maybe that's the point you're trying to make, that mentorship is given out of that wistful feeling of wishing you had received advice/help and passing along the lessons that took you too long to find.
But still, if your role is getting stuck alone in the server room or whatever with a team of people who don't understand or respect what you do, good luck.
The point I was trying to make (and maybe failed because I got too focused on my own experience) is that really, not everyone gets mentors, even of the broader sort that you're referring to (which I might say are more accurately called friends or peers). But even if we widen the scope of what mentorship is, it's also perfectly reasonable for field-specific mentorship to be a cultural expectation for software engineering. I think it's a good thing to expect this of each other, and to encourage explicitly making space for the practice.
But again, however you want to widen the scope of what mentorship is, not everyone is getting it. The reason people look under rocks is because they don't know where to look. Or they do know where to look but also know they have blind spots and don't know how to get them addressed. "Look up" is nice and all, but it's a bit rude and distracting when you're trying to build something and need help understanding the foundation below your feet. Sometimes you don't need someone telling you to look up, you need help seeing where to look closer.
