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Software Developer: First Year
So you survived your first day on the job. First week. First month… now what? At the end of my first 4 weeks as a software developer I felt useless at best and like I might get fired at worst. Here I was making more money than I ever had while barely contributing to a codebase that I did not understand and pestering my co-workers about the processes for deploying, reviewing and creating code on a daily basis. Maybe I’m not cut out for this I thought.
Did my co-workers resent me for all my questions? Was the boss waiting to fire me? Why did they even hire me? I was filled with self-doubt for the better part of my first year and as my end of year review approached I increasingly felt like I might get ripped apart and resigned myself to the fact that my review would probably be pretty critical. Did I mention I’m a but neurotic? Didn’t know if you could tell.
Surprisingly, despite a fairly high profile bug I created, my inability to take on some of the more difficult assignments and what seemed (to me at least) like my constant pestering, my manager was actually really happy with my performance. Huh? While he didn’t site my superior coding ability as any of the reasons he was happy to have me on the team, he was impressed with my willingness to take on whatever task was asked of me, my incessant curiosity and my grit! What I lacked in technical ability I consciously…
