I wonder if this is something new, at least it seems to me new. Working now more than 10 years in Software engineering, I never experienced anyone appearing as

I wonder if this is something new, at least it seems to me new. Working now more than 10 years in Software engineering, I never experienced anyone appearing as mentor. Nowadays I both have to mentor and get mentored. This seems so weird to me. People did really well for years without it. People got really crazy skills, came up with great ideas and wrote rock solid software. This works very well when being both responsible and open to experimentation.