“Just” — a dirty word that you ought not saying to a new (young) employee

Have you ever been hired somewhere and nobody bother introducing you? Yeah, same here. Okay, you can identify the bathroom and the kitchen yourself, but what happens when it comes to serious stuff like … your project.

You have no idea where to get the source code. You have no idea what you should do. Yo’re completely out of the context. And all of the sudden you receive a request. Obviously you have no idea how to approach it and you start asking around.

And the answer is: “That’s simple! Just uploaded to the server restart the Mambo-Jumbo app pool, run the smoking tests and if it passes you are good to go.”

• what server?
• what app pool?
• what happens if id doesn’t pass the smoke tests? Fire? Will I be fired?

That’s my reaction when I hear “just” in this context. What would my new manager would think if I am not able to accomplish a task that I don’t know what, much less how, to solved it. It’s even harder when you are a fresher and nobody what’s you.

Sure, there are companies who train new people, or assigns someone to help him in the first months but the example given above occurred many times in various shapes and places.

That’s why I wrote this, hopefully I am raising a signal for the employers to train the new employees, not just adding pressure from the first day without a context.