Mentorship reproduces hierarchy
Mentorship is sold as meritocratic development. Learn from those who came before. Climb the ladder through guidance and wisdom. This narrative obscures mentorship’s primary function: reproducing existing power structures while making subordinates grateful for their subordination.
The mentor-mentee relationship is fundamentally asymmetrical, and this asymmetry doesn’t disappear upon “graduation” – it crystallizes into permanent hierarchical positioning.
The Selection Mechanism
Mentors don’t choose mentees randomly. They select individuals who reflect their own values, backgrounds, and thinking patterns. This isn’t conscious bias – it’s structural necessity.
A mentor’s reputation depends on their mentees’ success. Rational mentors minimize risk by choosing mentees who already demonstrate alignment with existing systems. The “diamond in the rough” narrative is marketing fiction.
This creates a feedback loop: those who receive mentorship are those who least threaten existing arrangements. Revolutionary thinking gets filtered out at the selection stage, not developed through the relationship.
Knowledge as Currency
Mentorship operates on an information economy where knowledge becomes a scarce resource to be doled out strategically.
The mentor maintains power by controlling access to critical information: industry networks, unwritten rules, insider knowledge. This creates artificial scarcity around information that could theoretically be democratized.
The mentee learns to be grateful for breadcrumbs of insight, never questioning why this knowledge was withheld in the first place. The system trains them to later withhold the same information from their own potential mentees.
Debt Structure
Every piece of advice, every introduction, every “opportunity” creates implicit debt. The mentee owes loyalty, gratitude, and most importantly, continuation of the system that elevated them.
This debt isn’t discharged upon success – it compounds. Successful mentees become obligated to mentor others, perpetuating the same hierarchical structure that constrained their own development.
The mentor-mentee relationship thus becomes a pyramid scheme of obligation, with each generation indoctrinating the next into accepting their position within established hierarchies.
Gatekeeping Disguised as Development
“Readiness” becomes the ultimate gatekeeping tool. Mentees must prove they’re “ready” for the next level of information or opportunity. This readiness is always defined by the mentor’s subjective assessment.
The criteria for readiness mysteriously align with maintaining existing power structures. Challenge the system too directly, and you’re “not ready.” Think too independently, and you “need more seasoning.”
This allows mentors to feel benevolent while systematically excluding disruptive thinking. They’re not blocking progress – they’re ensuring “proper development.”
Network Capture
Mentorship networks create closed loops of influence. Mentees gain access to the mentor’s network, but only under the mentor’s terms and implicit oversight.
These networks become self-reinforcing hierarchies where everyone owes their position to someone above them. Challenging any part of the system risks losing access to the entire network.
The “old boys’ club” doesn’t need explicit exclusion policies when mentorship networks naturally reproduce homogeneous thinking and background profiles.
Value Transmission
Mentorship doesn’t just transfer skills or knowledge – it transmits value systems. Mentees learn not just what to do, but what to value, what to prioritize, what to consider important.
This value transmission is often more powerful than formal education because it comes wrapped in personal relationship and gratitude. Mentees internalize their mentor’s worldview as wisdom rather than ideology.
The result is value systems that appear to emerge from personal development but actually represent the systematic reproduction of existing power structures’ underlying assumptions.
The Success Trap
Successful mentees become the strongest defenders of mentorship systems. Their success validates the system that elevated them, making criticism feel like ingratitude or revisionist history.
This creates a survivor bias in mentorship narratives. Those who succeeded through the system advocate for it, while those who were filtered out or failed to benefit remain invisible in success stories.
The most effective hierarchical reproduction occurs when its beneficiaries genuinely believe in its merit-based nature.
Alternative Development Models
Peer learning networks, knowledge commons, open-source development models, and democratized information access all threaten mentorship’s monopoly on development pathways.
These alternatives don’t rely on hierarchical approval or create artificial scarcity around knowledge. They enable development without requiring participation in power reproduction systems.
The resistance to these models – often from successful mentorship advocates – reveals mentorship’s true function as hierarchy maintenance rather than development optimization.
Systemic Function
Mentorship serves capitalism’s need for willing participants in hierarchical structures. It creates the illusion of mobility while ensuring that mobility occurs within acceptable parameters.
The system needs people who believe they earned their position through merit and guidance, not systemic advantage. Mentorship provides the narrative framework for this belief.
Most importantly, it trains each generation to recreate the same constraints they experienced, ensuring hierarchical reproduction across time.
Beyond the Mentor-Mentee Paradigm
True development might require abandoning mentorship’s fundamental assumptions: that knowledge should be scarce, that guidance requires hierarchy, that success depends on approval from existing power holders.
What would development look like if information were freely accessible, if peer networks replaced hierarchical guidance, if success were measured by contribution rather than position?
The mentorship industrial complex resists these questions because they threaten its foundational premise: that some people deserve to control others’ development pathways.
Mentorship’s real value proposition isn’t individual development – it’s systemic stability. It ensures that change happens within existing frameworks, that success requires buy-in to established hierarchies, and that each generation teaches the next to accept their place.
The most insidious aspect is how it makes hierarchy reproduction feel like personal growth.