6 Tips to Survive Your First Year as a Junior Developer

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Your first job as a developer can be daunting! Imposter syndrome kicks in. You don’t feel good enough. You are overwhelmed by the huge code base you have to work in. You have no idea what your colleagues are talking about… We have all been there my friend.

Here are 6 tips to help you on your journey.

1. Write it down

When you start your first job, there is so much information that needs to be retained that it would be impossible to remember it all. Whenever you ask a question, write down the answer. It is much better to refer to your notes than to keep asking your colleagues the same question over and over again.

Writing down your answers also allows you to look over your notes to recap important bits of information. And don't just think its programming-related knowledge which needs to be retained. You will also have to learn the companies git workflow, the companies process of moving tickets through the board, the software itself, etc.

2. Ask questions

Ask questions all the time. Do not sit in silence struggling. Also, do not be afraid to ask the same questions you have previously asked. As stated in the point above, there is a lot of information to be gathered, and retaining all of it is more or less impossible.

3. Understand your feelings are normal

Starting your first developer job is daunting. In my first role I felt clueless, I felt way out of my depth and I honestly didn’t think I could stick it out. Every single developer has had this feeling! Your feelings are normal.

Software companies know that junior developers take some time before the company starts benefiting from them in business-terms. Do not feel that you should know everything after a couple of months, heck, even senior developers who join the team would take a lot longer than that to learn a whole new code-base.

4. Play around with the code

Don’t be nervous about touching the code. It is one of the best ways you can learn a code-base. Try and figure out what parts of the system does what; change some code, re-run the program and see what happens. Hopefully before this point, a member of the team has shown you around the repository, so you shouldn’t be clueless when it comes to this point.

If no one has shown you around the code-base, refer to step #2.
And don’t worry, if you screw up you can always revert your changes and start again; assuming your place at work uses a source control such as git to keep track of changes.

5. Learn in your spare time

Some may be reading this shaking their heads right now, but first let me say this; this list is not a definitive guide, you do not have to do what is stated in this article; but doing so will accelerate your progress tenfold.

Whatever you are struggling with during the working day, dedicate an hour or so on the evening to mastering this tool. For me, I struggled with git when I first started, I had only used git for sole projects and I was therefore unaware of a lot of commands which can help in a team setting. After dedicating some time to git and understanding its internals, it has not once bothered me since!

6. Rotate your pull requests

Every member of the team will have their own individual skill set. Use this to your advantage to maximize your potential. You will learn a lot more!

When I first started my job, I would always send my code to be reviewed by one of the three seniors who would always seem to plaster me with comments. Each senior had their own criticisms so it was wise to vary the reviewer of my code.

There were a lot of similarities in the comments I would receive, so of course as time passed, I would already be aware of some of the common pitfalls I was making with my code during development time.