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

submitted 1 year 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] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems to me, you’re dealing with a micromanager.

Personal recommendation - put things into writing. When you get your assignment verbally, write it down with assumptions you have to make to fill the gaps, and send it to the person who gave you the assignment, with the person responsible for your teams’ results in CC. Basically an “I heard you, and I’m starting the work as described below”.

Communication is one of the most important skills in software engineering, and this way you get to practise it while probing the social waters of dealing with management.

Try it, see how it goes, adjust accordingly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

This. Developers have to be very detail-oriented but a lot of managers are not. When this happens to me, I like to write the task up in bullet points (making assumptions where necessary) and ask my project manager to review, "just to make sure I understood correctly." If I've assumed something wrongly, he normally admits that he wasn't specific enough and we work it out together.