Dev Trek: Week 1 at my first developer job
Going into my first week as an actual software developer, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I certainly wasn’t expecting to begin the week with a cold that added a surreal haze to the whole week. I guess that was my first lesson… expect the unexpected and roll with it.
Despite feeling under-the-weather, it felt great to get to dive into real work right away. Working through real-world code to add new functionality was just the thing I needed to start feeling comfortable in my new role. That being said, I noticed some things throughout the week that I’d like to work on over the next few weeks.
- I need to work on time boxing. I’m still working on figuring out the balance between struggling to get through something on my own (which helps things stick for me), and getting with someone to just get the work done faster.
- My confidence needs work. I had gut feelings about pieces of code I was working on, but kept thinking my initial feelings were wrong. I need to get better about trusting my gut and digging deeper into those ‘code smells’ to get at the root of what could be improved.
- Testing. I want to get better about knowing what tests I need to write to throughly cover changes I’ve made.
Something new and noteworthy for me is working directly with a mentor. With that in mind, I was specifically challenged to think about what I want/need from a mentor… something I’d not given a lot of thought before. Two things that I believe are key for me are approachability and honesty. It’s incredibly important to me that I feel like I can be honest with any mentor I have and trust that they will be honest with me. I don’t want to be coddled, but I also expect that they won’t be overly rude when leveling with me. I also like to be pointed towards resources to help me figure stuff out (pointing me towards functions or concepts is super helpful when I’m stuck), as that helps me learn things and really internalize them.
All-in-all, I was really pleased with my first week and look forward to many more to come.
