So, I recently moved across the world to start my first official job as a Junior Software developer. I was super excited to be given the opportunity, and I was really looking forward to earning money for doing what I love... Boy what a plot twist...

I don't really know what I was expecting, but I was completely overwhelmed by the new job. Everyone knows so much more than I do, and I cannot help but feel a little inferior. The guy in charge of training me intimidates the hell out of me too. He's been working on the system since the beginning, and when I ask questions, he always answers it with this "how don't you know that" tone in his voice which really makes me feel stupid.

Another unexpected problem is that there is not a single comment in the thousands of lines of code. Other than that, it seems that there exists not one document describing how the system works or fits together. The smallest assignments has me hunting for hours instead of actually developing, which is annoying the hell out of me, and also adds to my insecurity. Add to this the fact that I am adept (at best) at speaking the language, and you have a totally unsure and frustrated new employee.

Why am I telling you all this? Simply, because I need to vent. I am very frustrated, and I am having doubts in my abilities because of this. Luckily I'm not the kind of person to give up easily, and I will keep giving my best, but man is it hard!

Also, is it normal for large companies to not have any comments in their code? I swear if there were at least some vague explaination of the code, I would have been productive so much faster!

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Zet wrote to All <=-

So, I recently moved across the world to start my first official job as
a Junior Software developer. I was super excited to be given the opportunity, and I was really looking forward to earning money for
doing what I love... Boy what a plot twist...

Sounds like a bit of a tough gig with some signs of poor company culture. Hang in there, but worth keeping an eye open for greener pastures. I hope things improve for you.

I think it is unreasonable for a company to expect you to know everything off the bat. Every company and job requires some learning - even the non tech related work I do these days requires some basic knowledge of the workplace and where to find things I need, let alone something like software development.

I also find the lack of comments a bit worrying, because I've always seen comments as valuable "in line" documentation, which help explain what the code does.


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Re: Re: Those first dev jobs blues
By: Vk3jed to Zet on Sat Jun 24 2017 17:22:00

Thanks a lot for the support guys! I really needed that!

The thing is just that this is my first dev job out of university, and it is
as far away from home (physically) as I possibly can be. I am also here on a working permit, and if I lose that (which I will if I lose the job), I'll be sent back home. So I think there is an understandable amount of pressure on me to sort of... make this work. It doesn't really look like I would be losing the job, but this is the sort of thing that is on my mind everytime that I get a snarky answer or a disappointed look...

With regards to the other devs; I don't think that they are doing this on purpose. The two guys I work with in a team have been working together for the past 4 - 5 years, so I am sure that they can read each other's code and immediately understand what is going on. They have obviously also worked on this project for a long time and know exactly where everything is... I have tried to tell them that I am a little overwhelmed, and then they do try to slow down and explain as much as they can to me, but of course there is work to be done and they can't just stop everything to explain it to some new guy...

All of this sounds super rational to me, but now the problem is that they keep dropping hints that I am not contributing enough. I have only been in this job for 6 weeks, and I honestly doubt that anyone would (directly out of university and without any experience) just walk in and just take over.

I think the biggest issue is the fact that these guys have been working together for too long, and lost touch with what it's like to be new and have an inexperienced person in the team.

And documentation would have helped. That way I could have done more on my own and independetly get to know the system...

Again, this is just me venting and trying to make myself feel better.

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Re: Re: Those first dev jobs blues
By: Zet to All on Tue Jun 27 2017 11:51 am

With regards to the other devs; I don't think that they are doing this on purpose. The two guys I work with in a team have been working together for the past 4 - 5 years, so I am sure that they can read each other's code and immediately understand what is going on. They have obviously also worked on this project for a long time and know exactly where everything is... I have tried to tell them that I am a little overwhelmed, and then they do try to slow down and explain as much as they can to me, but of course there is work to be done and they can't just stop everything to explain it to some new guy...

All of this sounds super rational to me, but now the problem is that they keep dropping hints that I am not contributing enough. I have only been in this job for 6 weeks, and I honestly doubt that anyone would (directly out of university and without any experience) just walk in and just take over.

I think the biggest issue is the fact that these guys have been working together for too long, and lost touch with what it's like to be new and have an inexperienced person in the team.

today at work i sat at my desk and listened to the radio.
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Re: Those first dev jobs blues
By: Zet to All on Fri Jun 23 2017 05:44 pm

Also, is it normal for large companies to not have any comments in their code?

No, that is very unusual. In addition to comments, there should (normally) be architecture and design documents, requirements documents, user documents, test plans, etc. If you don't have these documents or comments in the code, it sounds like a very unprofessional organization there.


digital man

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Re: Those first dev jobs blues
By: Zet to All on Fri Jun 23 2017 05:44 pm

I don't really know what I was expecting, but I was completely overwhelmed by the new job. Everyone knows so much more than I do, and I cannot help but feel a little inferior. The guy in charge of training me intimidates the hell out of me too. He's been working on the system since the beginning, and when I ask questions, he always answers it with this "how don't you know that" tone in his voice which really makes me feel stupid.

There seems to be a lot of that out there.. It depends on the company, too. Large companies, particularly high-tech companies that hire many software developers, seem to have a higher chance of that happening. Software developers seem to be an opinionated bunch. Many of them like their own way of doing things and often question other developers' ways of doing things if different from their own. And some may not understand that not everyone has had the same training, so some might have a "how don't you know that" tone as you've mentioned.

Another unexpected problem is that there is not a single comment in the thousands of lines of code. Other than that, it seems that there exists not one document describing how the system works or fits together. The smallest assignments has me hunting for hours instead of actually developing, which is annoying the hell out of me, and also adds to my insecurity. Add to this the fact that I am adept (at best) at speaking the language, and you have a totally unsure and frustrated new employee.

I've also seen a lot of code that isn't well commented. It seems that many software developers just aren't in the habit of commenting their code well.. It frustrates me too. And some will even encourage "self-documenting code". I don't think that's always feasable.. Sometimes, the code doesn't make it totally obvious what it's doing. Also, I think it's important to know not only what the code is doing, but why. The *why* is a good thing to put in the comments.
One thing that also surprised me is that some companies don't have much documentation on the project in general. And when I was in college, we learned about software design documents such as class diagrams, sequence diagrams,
etc. (UML), and it seems many software developers don't know about those, so of course they aren't going to create such design documents..

Nightfox

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