Why does it have to be either "say nothing and let them break production" OR "suddenly I have an apprentice"... can't it just be a simple comment in the PR, as a peer developer?
"Hey, I think this will break if XXX happens (provide an example if you can). Can you please take a look before merging? Let me know if you need help".
I'd say that to any colleague (and hope they would to me) if I found a bug during code review, regardless of their team. I mean, it honestly sounds pretty routine and is the whole point of code review, no?
It doesn't mean I'm mentoring them or vice versa, and it's not a power play. It's just normal review in the line of normal work, peer to peer. It's fine that you're more experienced. We all start somewhere, and at some point, he'll be more experienced than you about some particular part of the code base, but your careful eye and constructive feedback is still valuable regardless. I don't see the problem.
Those are my thoughts exactly. I see these "I am a mentor" posts on HN all the time. I think the developers (senior or not) fantasize about being a mentor to feel important. It is likely an unsolved ego issue. I help my friends at work or outside of work with bugs and any other type of work-related things and never consider myself a mentor. Also wanting to be a mentor type of fetish feels like BDSM to me.
This. Practically anyone claiming to be a mentor or wanting to be a mentor has issues. It's selfish ego boosting stuff. Additionally, in almost every discipline the world changes so much and the real decisions are so context dependent that any "mentor like" advice is as likely wrong as right. And if it's simpler stuff then it's just a random tidbit of advice from one person to another, or it's in a book somewhere and a random comment "dude i read awesome book x about y the other day" works - the person either doesn't care and won't read it or they do and they will.
Mentoring is making sure the person feels supported and knows you have their back in what they are doing. it’s “it might cause an outage, but I’ll help you fix it if that happens”
"Hey, I think this will break if XXX happens (provide an example if you can). Can you please take a look before merging? Let me know if you need help".
I'd say that to any colleague (and hope they would to me) if I found a bug during code review, regardless of their team. I mean, it honestly sounds pretty routine and is the whole point of code review, no?
It doesn't mean I'm mentoring them or vice versa, and it's not a power play. It's just normal review in the line of normal work, peer to peer. It's fine that you're more experienced. We all start somewhere, and at some point, he'll be more experienced than you about some particular part of the code base, but your careful eye and constructive feedback is still valuable regardless. I don't see the problem.
Is there some context I'm missing?