this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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Looking for advice as a junior software developer (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

As the title say I am looking for some advice.

I’m almost 6 months into my first role and it really isn’t what I expected.

I’m late thirties and always had an interest in tech, but personal circumstances and a late start in life left me unsure if I was good enough.

I did too many boot camps and in all them they discussed how in your first role you would get lots of support to help develop your skills.

I work for a small company < 10. I don’t feel I get the support I expected.

A lot of time the spec is kept in the lead engineers (owners) head and when given a task I get no timeframe, the task is given verbally with 100 words when I need 1000 words. It’s confusing to understand their vision so I’ll do something and either be told great or no that’s completely wrong.

If wrong I’m not called out and they will spend a little more time going over what they want.

The boss is always so busy that sometimes you feel like a burden asking for pointers.

The tech stack is great but as a mature company they have refined the process over numerous projects and the newest will start as a copy of the last one, keeping all the shared hooks and stuff, so naturally it’s second nature to them and I feel stupid.

I guess my question is is this normal and how do I write an email expressing these concerns and to gauge how I am doing?

As an aside, there is no remote work and no headphones in the office, even though nobody really talks about work that often. So when is a good time to start looking for your second role.

I feel like I flip between I am a god and can code anything and omg I know nothing show me the nearest bridge.

Thanks.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

In short: it's always like this, sometimes more, sometimes less. And guess what: it's the main part of the job. As a developer you have to understand what the customer (your boss) needs (sometimes not what they say they want) and to figure out how to do that by yourself. It's nice to have colleagues you can ask, but it's like on stackoverflow. The accepted answer is not necessarily the right or good one. Often you have to work with bad documented legacy artifacts (code, api) and figure out what they do. Also the tech changes, you have to constantly keep up with changes and what was great years ago may now be outdated. My advice:

  • Do not start coding until you are sure you understood what is to be done.
  • if there is no user story to describe the task write it yourself
  • write good tests for your code. It's an art. While thinking about corner cases you often find questions you did not think about at first
  • if you don't know how to do it ask people around you, browse the web, read books. Develop the skills to figure stuff out. Most of the time noone knows the correct answer. It's your job to find it.
  • do code reviews with others, usually both benefit from it
  • write clean code

If you don't like your working environment then change it. Especially when you think you can't learn anything new there or it is no fun to work there. Go to meetings in your area (meetup or so) or online to meet other developers and ask them about their job. You get a feeling about what is considered a good job in your area. Good developers will always find a good job. Be one of them. As long as you think you're a god who can code anything, that's probably not the case. ;-) The best you can achieve is to be an expert in a very narrow field and to be good in some others.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

This is my opinion as well. While what op describes sounds like he could definitely find a better company with a more supportive atmosphere, it’s just the nature of the job.

In my opinion it’s the best part!