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Comment by readittwice | Hacker News Reader

> Being in a mentor role does not mean you have to right to mentor.

Exactly. For what we know, the junior could have actively complained to the manager (wrongly or rightly) about her mentoring. OTOH the junior dev might have appreciated it. We can't say for sure.

Some people (myself included) prefer to get a general direction and then later to come back for further questions. Too much information in a short amount of time can be overwhelming, I need some time to absorb and read it up in the internet. A few keywords might be good enough to get someone going and figure it out themselves.

"learn at her own pace, without any pressure from you." This really sounds as if the manager had the junior dev's best interest in mind. I don't see how the manager said this to get back at Caroline, as was kind of implied in the article.

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> Some people (myself included) prefer to get a general direction and then later to come back for further questions. Too much information in a short amount of time can be overwhelming, I need some time to absorb and read it up in the internet. A few keywords might be good enough to get someone going and figure it out themselves.

I'm in a senior role on my team, and this is exactly how I'd describe the support I try to give my teammates when they ask (and hopefully, they'd agree). Unless someone is going down the significantly wrong path, I'll generally leave them alone until they ask for assistance. Sometimes, they ask for a direction, sometimes they ask for the type of "pair programming" described in the post (screensharing via video calls), but how much or little they get is up to them, and they drive.

In this case, you're right that we don't know the context of the story from the more junior developer's perspective, and it's completely plausible that they weren't happy with the mentorship they were receiving, but also didn't feel comfortable giving that feedback themselves, all of which is a shame.

You are absolutely right.

What makes me a bit skeptical here is that Coraline just writes 'this teammate seemed to be benefiting from it'. But doesn't mention that the junior dev appreciated it or thanked her for her help. Didn't the junior complain about the missing mentoring after the intervention of the manager?

But who knows, probably I am reading way too much into these few sentences...

I'm in a senior role on my team, and this is exactly how I'd describe the support I try to give my teammates when they ask

I think this level of support is a fairly widespread target for the first interaction on a topic. We're (generally speaking) working among fellow talented professionals within a small-enough window of related disciplines and skill levels. The reasonable assumption is that someone requesting help needs just enough new information to establish connective tissue in their own mental understanding of a problem to become self-sufficient again (even if that means doing more research, learning, digging, etc... on their own). Topics that require a "brain dump" from someone with the institutional knowledge is a sign of technical debt and that information belongs in internal documentation.

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