Get multiple mentors
Having a mentor will help you grow a lot – usually your mentor is your local TL but there seems to be some kind of hidden expectation that you can only have one mentor. I’ll get straight to the point, you can (and should if you desire) have multiple.
Becoming a mentor isn’t becoming some kind of lord – it’s not even an official role. Some people might be mentors without knowing it (e.g. I think good and nice senior engineers will naturally be mentors for others).
Most of the time, your mentor is your local TL since they are close to your work so they can go deep about technical details with you and are aware about your work environment (e.g. product priorities, organization process etc.). I think it’s however useful to have more distant mentors:
- From other companies – these can give you more perspective on what other process/technical solution may work. Note that something working at
doesn’t necessarily work for your company but they are good to know - From other technical domains – engineers tend to have expertise in specific topics, and for example the best way to learn about network challenges is to have a mentor who specialized in network
- From other functions – as an engineer, you can learn a lot from product managers, project managers, product counsel etc. These folks see the world in a different way and it’s very interesting to understand how they operate
I personally had the chance to have a lot of mentors during my careers – interestingly enough I didn’t have any formal relations with most of them. Some were just peers that I would chat with at lunch, some were just coworkers in other orgs that I interacted a lot with and some were just friends.
If your mentor gets offended that you are learning from others, you just have a toxic mentor.