[Jeff Higgins]

I spent the last half of my career mentoring junior engineers. I found it extremely satisfying and rewarding. I was fortunate, however, in that the group in which I worked never hired anyone off the streets, right out of school. One had to earn their way into that group through one's performance in other engineering groups.

Until one day, our new manager decided to roll the dice and hire a couple of fresh grads. Boy, we we all worried. We got lucky, however, and both proved to be outstanding. And they had not yet learned all of the "bad habits" from other groups, who functioned somewhat differently than ours.

So, yeah, if you have a chance to mentor, I don't think you will find a more rewarding use of your time. And it's a lot of fun. Starting with sharp young people to begin with, who are eager to learn, who have the basics is fantastic. Our mentoring was really just task-specific application more than anything else. All we had to do was show them how we did it, explain why we did it that way, and they were off to the races. Fun times.