Ask HN: What to do when struggling as junior swe?
3 comments
I think your problem is confidence, I was like this as a junior engineer, afraid everyone would see how dumb I was compared to them so I never asked for help. Every new employee is different, and nobody comes in knowing everything. They expect you to ask dumb questions, if you don't you're cheating yourself and the team.
I learned this the hard way, I took down the company website on a Friday night, the lead dev had to call in from a camping trip with his kids to fix my error.
yuppie_scum's post is smart, the job market is hot for anyone who can code, even a little bit! Follow directions and keep learning, probably they won't fire you, and with time you'll get better. If they fire you, move on, learn from it and do better at your next gig.
What I did was learn to unblushingly ask questions about the things I didn't understand, and REALLY LISTEN to the answer. Listening is the key, close your laptop if you have to, turn off your external monitor and put away your cellphone. The devs I worked with would carefully explain stuff, and respond to my dumb questions. But if I didn't remember what they told me, they'd stop answering my questions. I learned to use the research skills I learned in school, read up on the tech the team used, take notes, played with it on my own time.
Eventually I realized they weren't smarter than me, and if I keep trying, keep researching, almost any problem is solvable. Good Luck!
edit: grammar
I learned this the hard way, I took down the company website on a Friday night, the lead dev had to call in from a camping trip with his kids to fix my error.
yuppie_scum's post is smart, the job market is hot for anyone who can code, even a little bit! Follow directions and keep learning, probably they won't fire you, and with time you'll get better. If they fire you, move on, learn from it and do better at your next gig.
What I did was learn to unblushingly ask questions about the things I didn't understand, and REALLY LISTEN to the answer. Listening is the key, close your laptop if you have to, turn off your external monitor and put away your cellphone. The devs I worked with would carefully explain stuff, and respond to my dumb questions. But if I didn't remember what they told me, they'd stop answering my questions. I learned to use the research skills I learned in school, read up on the tech the team used, take notes, played with it on my own time.
Eventually I realized they weren't smarter than me, and if I keep trying, keep researching, almost any problem is solvable. Good Luck!
edit: grammar
Thanks for the kind words, I'll work on the confidence and, yeah, definitely the asking questions.
The “spent a week fixing a problem” story is a red flag. Lack of communication was your problem. Don’t try and “surprise” people with “good deeds” like fixing problems. Just Do Your Job. Ask questions, keep open lines of communication with your boss and your team. Do what you are told and do it as well as possible. Your boss sets your priorities, he probably had something different in mind for you to work on that you delayed by taking this little side quest. Do Your Job.
If you feel the current job is unsalvagable, guess what it’s the best job market in history. Go get another job. Employers don’t really give a crap about what happened at your last role if you look like you’ll bring value to a new shop.
If you feel the current job is unsalvagable, guess what it’s the best job market in history. Go get another job. Employers don’t really give a crap about what happened at your last role if you look like you’ll bring value to a new shop.
I got my first swe job this past August and it honestly has not gone well. I've enjoyed it, but it is clear that I am not seen as reliable and definitely not known for completing things fast and correctly.
I know this sounds like a normal junior dev, but I mean more than a normal beginner. Example: I have now been on this team for 8 months, and I made 2 costly mistake back-to-back that is pushing back the release of a production feature by a while month at this point.
Long story short, screwed up a step I had done before in the fall without realizing, then immediately after an unrelated issue came up and I spent a week and half trying to fix it instead of telling team members. Then when it was fixed I submitted a ticket for a prod systems account rather than a QA one not realizing there would be a difference. (Just so many mistakes all in a row).
The struggles came way before this though. Almost every new story I am assigned, I have no idea where to begin. I end up asking tons of questions and running blindly in circles. I was sometimes assigned stories no one else on the team had done anything remotely like before, so at times I couldn't even ask the senior devs for help.
This gets down to the issue. I don't think my team is necessarily the most ideal to learn on (my manager has been gone since December and when he was around was busy managing 2 other teams so we didn't talk much). The senior engineers also seem to assume I have basic knowledge of things (like the credentials above, it seems obvious there would be an account for QA and one for Prod, but I didn't know to assume that). But, the thing is though, this team isn't a bad one. I can make excuses all I want, but a barely more experienced engineer joined the same time I did and he knew more by week 3 than I know now.
I have identified some issues. I certainly didn't ask enough questions when I started and I definitely will wait around for people to get back to me sometimes rather then be proactive. I also tend to spend hours tackling an issue or trying to fix something I think I messed up rather than raise it to the team that I am having an issue. The problem is at this point I have been on the team too long to ask any basic questions, one of the senior engineers even pointed out they shouldn't be helping me with certain processes at this point.
I've been trying to identify other problems and possibly my memory is terrible? I sometimes can't remember the things we went over or every step of things we did in the fall.
Honestly, I am also super deflated. I know imposter syndrome is a thing, but that doesn't count when I am actively slowing the team down and causing problems. Imposter syndrome is worrying everyone will find out you are a fake even though you are doing your work well enough. I am not doing it well and I am not worried about people finding out because people already know I am bad. The amount of time I delayed our release (3 weeks) probably equals the amount of time it would take the senior engineers to do all the work I have done in these 8 months. I did well in school in my CS classes and worked hard, and so its a huge kick in the gut to just feel like my team actively is disappointed in me and that if any issue came up, I am probably the last engineer anyone would want to help (and probably the first they would assume caused it).