5 Pieces of Advice for Junior Software Engineers Starting their First Job
Being a Junior Software Engineer is a vulnerable point in your career. You are dealing constant imposter syndrome, wondering how are you going to climb the learning curve and taking joy in frequent lightbulb moments where things seem to click.
It’s easy to compare your progress to others and feel some sort of emotion towards that. It’s human to do so. As a junior it can be frustrating to begin to unravel not only the code but day to day life as a software engineer. It can feel like two steps forward and one step back.
These are 5 tips from personal hard learned lessons over the years to help unlock a small piece of that learning a bit quicker.
1. I won't expect you to know sh*t but I will expect you to give a sh*t.
Look, when you are a junior I won’t expect you to know about the intricacies of caching, writing perfect unit tests, well optimised data queries or advanced XSS defence. These are just a few examples, they illustrate a point.
What I absolutely will expect, is that you care and take ownership. I can help mentor you and guide you. I can set clear expectations and deliver a learning path. What I cannot do, is do the learning for you. That is on you. You need to care about learning these things, you need to want to get better for the team, but mainly yourself. I need you to grow beyond a junior, that’s ultimately why we are investing in you. I can give you the framework and set some ground work, but building those walls, is going to take a lot of effort only you can give.
