(On a phone interview)

"So... in the entire span of your professional career, you've never had someone you could call a mentor?"

"Uh, nope, been mostly on my own."

"How did you learn new things?"

"I read a lot of Hacker News."

True story.

That would sound like a no no to an interviewer btw. You tend to say yes in these questions. It shows that you appreciate others and that you can work in a team.

Agree with @Elfocrash , answering this question like that will end you up jobless faster than you think. Saying that you never had a mentor in your life means that:
1. You have no reference level for helping others.
2. You feel uncomfortable reaching out, which could tank the project, because you're stubborn.

To be constructive, here's how you could improve your answer: A parent CAN be your mentor if you had no professional or academic mentor before. Mentioning a parent as a mentor also shows that you're capable of using all of your resources. Any friends who you discuss programming with can be your "mentors", as well.

@Elfocrash, it's not your fault if you weren't lucky. Even when I did have someone I could call mentor in other technologies, I never had a mentor on my Android career. I went straight from porting iOS games to Android using propietary tools at Gameloft to being the sole Android developer on a small studio. But, if I were OP I wouldn't say just HackerNews, I would have mentioned some specific authors that are well known in his technology. I always thought of Mark Murphy and Jake Wharton as my spiritual guides, LOL. Also Lars Vogel and his tutorials.

@Elfocrash: Not necessarily. It's better to be honest. If the man hadn't had the chance of a mentor yet, that's cool. @flatlevel: If I were you, I'd suggest to an interviewer that I'd appreciate the possibility to find a mentor and learn from him (in their company/team - where the new job would be).

Uh-oh, the managers have found DevRant! Let's have a lunch-and-learn about proper technique in professional left mouse button clicking, because that's teamwork, communication, and mentoring, right?

This whole "mentoring" thing is just a buzzword, because the bar has been set so low. Asking someone a question is NOT mentoring. To me it's more than that, a mentor is someone who takes you under their wing.

Have I asked people questions, and answered questions? Yes. Have I been mentored according to my definition? No. And I don't count as what I went through in my first dev job as mentoring, which involved the owner of the company (a dev) telling me the importance of turning on keyword highlighting in the editor, because keywords cannot be used as identifiers and the highlighting could save me a lot of debugging time. I was simultaneously aghast and insulted.

tldr: When they ask about mentoring in an interview (or anything else where you know the answer they are looking for), just lie.

IMO Stackoverflow is my mentor (and also has the opportunity to give back too)

I consider this constructive feedback everyone! Haha. I really need to get better at interviewing...

@sw0rdfishhhhh That was basically what I ended up saying. I really would like a mentor role in future endeavors to be quite honest.