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Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

In my personal experience, apart from onboarding, "forced" formal mentoring is bullshit and a total waste of time. No one benefits.

I totally get the benefits of getting advice from more experienced folks, but you can do that ad-hoc so I just don't see the point for formal set ups and have chalked it up as something that someone somewhere in the organisation thinks is useful that everyone should do - kinda like all the bullshit "team work" or "what colour are you"/"look inside yourself" training courses that we are all required to take from time to time but no one actually wants to do and are a 100% totally pointless exercise.

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It's a catch 22 situation because a lot of organisations expect folk to skill up but don't provide a formal structure to do so. I've worked on projects where I was helping out junior developers but criticised because it wasn't a profitable use of my time.

I agree with your point about "forced" mentoring though, some people just don't like to mentor so they shouldn't have to, but an organisation should encourage and reward it if it happens voluntary.

I struggle with this. We get juniors that really don't know much about programming yet, some that start because they know our domain well and know a bit of Python. There is a lot they should learn that others get from formal education before they start to work. But we don't know how to give structure to it as a company.

If your company cannot train junior engineers, perhaps you shouldn’t hire them. Doing does a disservice to all involved.

We don't really have a choice, but I wouldn't say we can't train them. They do improve a lot on their own and on the job. We do a lot of code review and give them time to figure things out, and we're OK at picking the ones who are able to learn like that.

I still feel we could have more structured, formal training but don't know how.

Could you share better your experience? And why do you think it's a pointless exercise?

The best kind is organic, but sometimes things need a little bit of a formal kick start.

Please don’t state your opinion as gospel truth.

In my experience I have benefited from being on both sides of the mentor-mentee relationship. I learned a lot from mentoring an intern, especially.

In what way is it stated as gospel truth? It literally starts with "In my personal experience".

How do you read comment starting with "In my personal experience" and respond with "Please don’t state your opinion as gospel truth.". Wtf?

Please stop hedging every post on the Web with 100 disclaimers about everything when it's obviously an opinion, or obviously you don't think it applies in every case but is a useful generalization, et c. It's a crappy way to write. Ignore the obtuse nitpickers and posters who willfully misunderstand.

OP was fine.

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