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Looking for advice as a junior software developer (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 11 months ago by dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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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[–] BmeBenji@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago

I’ve been in this industry for almost 5 years and having worked at 2 different massive ( > 10,000 employees) tech corporations, I feel comfortable saying this is how the industry is. I imagine that the main difference between a company the size of yours and the size of the ones I’ve worked at is how well the systems are documented. Regardless of where you’re working, they need to be willing to help new people onboard and onboarding people need to feel welcome and comfortable asking questions. I’m currently almost at 2 years at my current company and I still have to ask questions all the time. The people I ask sometimes seem annoyed with my questions, but they never seem to think it’s bad that I’m asking questions, and that’s good.

I think you ought to ask for better communication at the outset of your tasks, and if they’re upset by that or tell you it’s your job to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing then that indicates they’re not interested in building a team and it is never too early for you to start looking for a different job in that case. Any reasonable recruiter or interviewer you talk to should understand that’s a great reason to jump ship.