ABSTRACT
Cynthia’s fingers drummed on her desk as she stared off into space. She glanced at her notes from her last few meetings with her protégé, Roman, and then resumed staring, hoping an answer would come to her. He’s getting bored with our meetings, she worried. Roman was a vice president of software engineering for a startup company that had about thirty employees, while Cynthia was a director of software architecture for a large company with over 20,000 employees. She had signed up to participate in a mentoring program focused on helping startup companies get to the next level. The first four months of their meetings went well, and she felt like she was learning as much from him as he was learning from her.
