I made my biggest career mistake in the second job, not the first.

I changed solely for more money and made the mistake of not researching the company. The fit was so bad that I was fired within 2 weeks. I could not quit or I would have to pay a big recruitment fee that I did not have.

Later, I trained new developers, experienced or not. I gave them an entire project that would take me 2 or 3 days. They could take as long as they needed — no deadline. I always had a bunch of those that were low priority. They did everything from design to implementation, learned the internal culture and got to know the user community.

One person said that she learned more from me in 2 months than she had learned in the last 1 ½ years of the company’s formal training program which included a 6-week programming boot camp.

It’s interesting how much things have not changed, except the tools.