[testudovictoria]

Good mentors nudge and maybe push; they never shove.

The best mentor I ever had helped me orient myself when I had no idea what I wanted to do. My answers were always, "I'm not sure. As long as I'm actively developing, I'll likely be fine." This wasn't quite true. Working on feature sets that didn't make sense with the code's architecture only to be thrown out 3 months later was rough.

She was the one that encouraged me to work on skills during work hours. No employer is going to miss 1/40 hours when it's used for professional development that directly benefits them. She encouraged me to stick with learning new things when I was ready to phone it in. AWS certs aren't hard to pass, but I probably wouldn't have taken the test without her push. I would have never dipped my toe into management. I found that management wasn't for me, but it was a better experience than resting on my laurels for a year.

A good mentor is like a good friend checking in on you from time to time, but the relationship is professional. Everything pertains to your professional goals (or in support of) from a place of wanting the mentee to succeed.