> > Well, I think it should be the other way around, you first mentor someone > > and look with them into their packages and then decided about sponsorship. > > That's your opinion, and here's mine: I don't think that's important. If a > candidate looks promising and there is an intention to both sponsor > (confirming by e-mail that the applicant is sponsored when they apply) and > an intention to mentor (at least look through the AUR packages and give > them helpful hints), I don't think the order matters, as long as everyone > is honest with each other and both things happens before the application is > sent. > > That's not what happened in this case, though, since the application was > sent before there were any mentoring.
Through work, I've had the chance to train about ten employees and interns. I've also mentored two peers of mine. All of these people *looked* promising. They all either got through the job application process or struck me as someone I wanted to mentor. Furthermore, all of them professed a great interest in learning about QE, virtualization, software engineering, and whatever other topics were relevant to them. However, there have been a broad spectrum of outcomes. I'm going to be intentionally vague and say that some were brilliantly successful; others struggled but succeeded after *years* of intense efforts; others realized that they weren't actually that interested in the topic at hand, but only after investing much time and effort; and others failed due to incompetence and/or self-sabotage. Do I trust someone to be trustworthy and competent because they "[look] promising and there is an intention [...] to mentor"? Not at all. This is a comment on the sponsorship for this TU application, not a comment on this TU application itself (which has already been rescinded anyway).
