I’ve encountered this regularly.

I love to learn. I never want to stop learning.

Apparently, I’m in a minority.

I have often offered to work with folks, and teach them how to develop shipping software. This is something I’m actually fairly good at, having done it, my entire career. I’m retired, now, but continue to develop shipping software. I often offer to do so, with others, so they can learn in an actual production context.

Valuable stuff. They could actually learn skills that could boost their own careers into LEO.

Instead, they invariably ask me to do it for them, or, more annoyingly, say they’ll do it, then never show up, and castigate me for going ahead without them.

You learn to know who are the lazy ones, and at that point you can politely always respond with a, "what were you able to find on this?". You can repeat this ad infinitum since at that point, they're just being lazy and disrespectful of your time. They eventually give up going to you because they know they won't get you to do their work for them.

As someone who loves helping people to learn things for themselves... you have to identify these "help vampires" and just stop helping them.

I had a coworker who would ask me the same questions over and over and over, despite me trying to show them 10 different ways how to do it or find the answer in the docs or whatever. And eventually I just said I was too busy and they had to figure it out. After a while they actually started figuring stuff out.

Basically if those people aren't your direct reports, your obligation to help them only goes so far. Take care of yourself first. If they figure it out eventually then good for them. If not, it's really not your problem.

I've struggled with this, even encountering people who basically say "if AI can do it why do I need to spend any more time?"

It was disappointing hearing someone tank their own prospect of career growth like that.