You Don’t Need A Mentor Relationship, Do This Instead

I receive numerous mentorship requests daily. People reach out wanting to hop on a call to discuss their challenges. They offer me coffee, suggest virtual coffee chats, or ask me to "pick my brain." Some send pages of backstory, asking for guidance on their next steps. Unfortunately, I must decline most of these requests; if I accepted them all, I'd have no time for myself. The demand far exceeds the supply.

This issue isn't unique to me. In most companies, the distribution of experience levels resembles a large pizza with a small pancake on top, crowned by a single blueberry. At Amazon, for instance, senior engineers comprise only 10-15% of the software engineering population, while principal engineers and above make up a mere 1-2%.

These stark disparities mean finding an ongoing mentorship relationship is challenging. People one or two steps ahead of you have limited capacity to help others. When you ask for their time, you're requesting their most precious resource, making it easy fo…