Major takeaways from my first three months as a Software Developer
After graduating from college with a software development diploma, I started working as a software developer three months ago. Here are my major takeaways from initial months developing software, professionally:
Time is money
Like the Wall Street people would say “Time is money”! Organizations hire people for various reasons but in most cases there’s money or welfare involved, depending on the type of the organization. No organization would like an employee who would waste their time and would not take the job seriously. If you don’t know something, that may not be a problem; but if you are not willing to learn, that is a serious problem. Organizations expects you to improve gradually, especially for a starting position.
Understand problem domain
This is VERY important for any kind of problem solving task but this is an essential part of software development. Unless you understand the problem domain and the business requirements properly, there is always a possibility that you might be designing and coding a completely wrong thing. You may feel tempted to dive right into coding but take your time to better understand the problem domain. This will not only make your actual coding much faster but also you will not have to redo it from scratch!
Don’t assume things, ask questions
“There’s no such thing as a silly question!” When being assigned a task, it’s always good to ask questions to clearly understand the problem domain and the expectations in an objective manner. Sometimes I thought my boss requested something and assumed about his expectations but in reality the expectations were different from my assumptions. This wasted a lot of work hours for my organization.
Question early
Ask those questions as early in the process as possible! This will help you think about the problem in the correct way and, definitely, solve it in the correct way! This will make you a better problem solver and will help to form a problem solving process for you.
Take notes
Now, it’s important NOT to ask the same question over and over. So, the solution is to take proper notes. Taking notes will also solidify the business and domain knowledge. Personally, I like to take notes using pen and paper, which not only helps me to think about a problem clearly, it also helps me remember that for a longer period of time. My manager takes note in his iPad and one of my friend takes not in a note taking app. So, there’s a lot of tool to choose from.
Lines of code != Productivity
I got this from my manager. In the early days of my job, I was pretty worried that I am not writing enough code! Then my manager asked me a simple question: “why do you link your productivity with how many lines of code you write?” This literally changed my perspective! There’s a lot of thinking and research goes behind a line of code, which is simply the tip of the iceberg. It’s important that you take time to understand the domain, understand the technology, and design the solution even before you write a single line.
Request feedback
You need to make sure you are heading the right direction and you are meeting the expectations of the organization and the team. A good way to know about it is to request for feedback, if the manager is not already providing. This is also good for building good working relationship with the manager. This will also help you correct your path before it’s too late to make a comeback.
Trust yourself!!
Last but not the least, trust in yourself. As a software developer, you will have good days and bad days but we need to keep moving forward. Impostor syndrome is real and everyone suffers from it, from a bootcamp student to a experienced programmer. So, hang in there and trust in yourself. You deserve what you have achieved!
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