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SDG’s Guide for Junior Developers.md

Suncoast Developer’s Guild’s Guide for Junior Developers

Or

How to Not Shit the Bed at Your First Job:

This is a compiled list of advice I was given by a group of software developers in the Suncoast Developers Guild slack group when I accepted my first job as a junior developer.

  • Ask lots of questions. As in, a stupid amount of questions. Don't get cocky, don't make any enemies, do your job.

  • Don't go in with an attitude like you know better than everyone else, you're too smart for your job, etc

  • If you’re stuck, tell them. You’re presumably starting remote. Over communication is important as a remote dev. Doubly so as a new remote dev. If something doesn’t make sense say that and ask someone to help make it make sense.

  • I can’t stress the communication bit enough, please please over-communicate and ask for help

  • If you give yourself a time frame to sort something out, really really ask for help at the end of that time frame.

  • Don't spend 3 hours doing something just because "you have to get it" if there's someone else who can help.

  • Even if there isn't someone who can help at least air out the problem you're working on to them. Rubberducking is real. note: “rubber duck debugging” is explaining the problem or question out loud to yourself, a rubber duck, or someone else in order to more clearly understand the problem. A clearly articulated problem/question often leads to the solution.

  • learn to google better and faster . Improve thy google-fu young grasshopper

  • and your stackoverflow-fu. also, the process SO recommends for formulating a question (creating what they call a Minimal Reproducible Example) is great for narrowing down a problem and helping think through it. https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example

  • screw ups happen to everyone. Best advice there - own it, admit your mistake, and build a plan to make sure not only you don’t make that mistake again but build guardrails so coworkers won’t either.

  • My best tip: No one knows what their are doing either. We are all just pretending. Also, don’t pretend. Ask questions.

  • Your first pull request is going to get rejected.

  • Nothing you see in review is ever a personal slight against you and you shouldn't treat it as such.

  • Having seniors you get to work with is a luxury not everyone gets to have. They have lots of sage advice. Pick the brains of your seniors.

  • Oh, and for the love of gods, take breaks. If your brain is spinning because you just took in an infodump say you need a minute and take that minute

  • The main difference between "junior" and "senior" in my experience is thinking in terms of the complete system and doing the boring stuff because you understand its importance and not because someone told you to E.g. writing good tests, collecting metrics, setting up dashboards and detectors

  • Also, when you do start contributing, look for the patterns and how your team is currently doing things. Copy, paste, make it fit what you need to do. you're a junior, you don't need to invent the wheel, just learn from what the experienced devs do

  • Don’t jump right to coding a solution. Like. Ever. Take the time to understand the problem and think about it. Sure you could spend a week writing something complex but if you don’t need to think if that time is worth it. Planning saves time.

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