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Lets not forget that promotions are for those who build new stuff and those who maintain old stuff don't get promoted.

To add further insult to injury, colleges send SWE/SDEs to the work force to learn to 'actually code', while companies have no time to train jr developers so they are just thrown in the fire and hope for the best.

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At most companies I've worked for, mentoring and training junior engineers is a requirement for promotion. Also, you might not get promoted for maintenance but

1. keeping it running with a healthy userbase and demonstrating high impact does, and

2. if you know how to spin it, then maintenance work can look like "building new stuff".

> At most companies I've worked for, mentoring and training junior engineers is a requirement for promotion.

You've worked for some great orgs, then! My experience is mostly the opposite. One company I worked for did value mentorship, at least somewhat, and it was a factor in promotion decisions, but not mentoring others didn't really stop people from getting promoted.

I think this is more of a "do what I say, and not what I do" thing. Nominally most companies want you to mentor junior devs, but the worker who spends less time on that, and more time on higher visibility work gets the promotion priority.

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