After you get your first job, you'll realize that there's much more to it than you initially thought. Deadlines especially can be quite intimidating. Letting these deadlines loom over your head especially when you are not quite sure what you are doing would just add more anxiety. The wretched impostor syndrome might start kicking in. There would even be times when you would just rethink the whole career decision. Yes, this is the real world.
Needless to say that I have experienced all of this, initially. It was not easy for me during the first few months at least. Especially for someone like me being from a non tech background, surviving in the dev job was quite a task in itself. Here are some of the things I did to make sure that I'm in the right track and that I'm not getting overwhelmed by any of the above things, during my initial days.
You need not have everything figured out
Just constantly remind yourself that this is just your first job. You need not excel in your job right after you join. It is OKAY to suck once in a while. There's no shame in it. After all your first job right? Believe me, no-one in the industry have it all figured out. No-one is an expert in all the fields. Take one step at a time. Give yourself a little credit for the extraordinary effort you've been putting towards your career.
Take time for all things, great haste makes great waste
- Benjamin Franklin
Don't goof around in the beginning
Again, since this is your first job, you most definitely can't just take it for granted. So stop goofing around and get your hands dirty. If someone was able to learn it, you can too. Just the intent to learn is enough. Just that will make everything fall in place. And if you are at your dream job, your curiosity will take you places. Everything would look so freaking difficult until it is done. So don't make excuses in your first job. I mean really do your Google searching, dig through documentation, and crawl through forums. Don't expect someone to tell you the things that you should already be doing.
If you get stuck, Go get help
There's no harm in reaching out to people. When your senior assigns you some tasks, they just want you to learn something out of it and it is okay to get stuck. The odds are strong that some of the tasks they assigned to you is hard and they know it. They would already be expecting for you to reach them. BUT. BUT. BUT. Make sure you do a lot of researching on your own about the problem you got stuck with before reaching your senior or your colleague for help. That way you'll know the right questions to ask and they would expect it too. You learn how to be better at your job by digging because you'll know how to ask better questions.
Stop and take a deep breath
If you gave in your full effort and still failed, stop for a while and take a deep breath. Just let it sink in. Some things are meant to be hard and it would be difficult to learn. But at the end of the day, what matters is that you gave in your full effort. Take some much needed rest and start again. Just remember that giving up was never on the cards. You can always start fresh. If you develop some kind of anxiety, while you're are at it, re-prioritizing your tasks every morning would most definitely help. Just take a digital notes app or a simple notepad and list down all the tasks that you have for the day. strike out all the unimportant ones and start with the priority ones. Don't get overwhelmed by one unimportant behemoth of a task, instead focus on the right and important ones.
Good luck at excelling at your first job. Just remember to give yourself a pat in the back every once in a while. You got this!
And the all the illustrations that you see in this post are from Janis Ozolins. The guy is awesome, just have a visit to his IG profile.
Cheers, see you in the next post.
Top comments (1)
Absolutely great points! Agree!
The biggest steps forward in dev career usually come when you can tolerate some pain. Staying only within the safe boundaries often doesn't make progress happens. Bugs, typos and problems are the 'walls' that are there to guide forward. Greet these with gratitude! It's funny how being too devoid of trouble actually is the false safe place. Most stressfull moments can be when there's a lot of simultaneous new things, but it'll eventually make sense and settle.