I’ve always valued the mentor / mentee process and have gone out of my way to help a couple of students from my former university.

The problem is, I’ve struggled to find a mentor that isn’t currently at my company.

Not looking for a job or even network building - I love my job, simply looking for someone to chat with about issues and career development as someone only a few years into their career as a SWE.

Most of the recommendations I receive are sites where the individual has a large list of mentees and cost hundreds of dollars.

Are there better ways to go about this?

Suggestion for @dang, a montlhy "who wants to hang out?" thread.

Although, I can see how it could enshittify quickly with recruiters and whatnot.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42640309 - there's some effort going on around that, and I wouldn't rule out building something into HN

(edit: though it looks like you already have it in your profile!)