Agreed. The mentoring I benefitted from was never from other programmers. Most of my colleagues have been antagonists. Elders to learn from were few. I started a book club just to have some peeps to geek with.

Maybe it's a cohort thing. I've definitely coached, mentored a lot of other people.

I agree. I don't know that skill growth can be provided by "mentorship". At most, I think mentorship can provide (or is perhaps conflated with providing) direction & guidance.

I've never been in the situation where someone can magically grow my skills for me, or download information into my brain for me.

Sure, there's exposure to ideas regarding programming frameworks, ways of doing things, system design ideas to receive from colleagues & supervisors. And communication & leadership knowledge & experience gained as well.

I agree. I'd say the vast majority of any mentoring I've gotten hasn't been technical. It's been more along the lines of "this how to manage your work in Jira." Or softer skills like learning how to prioritize tasks given the org goals.

But covid hit when I was maybe 6 months into my tech career, and I honestly don't feel like it had any negative impact. All of these things were transmitted just as effectively in a zoom call as they were in person.