
Hard Truths for New Software Developers - fagnerbrack
https://hackernoon.com/7-hard-truths-about-starting-a-career-as-a-developer-z56u301p
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mrkeen
I get the exact opposite takeaway from:

> 7\. Your evaluative metrics have shifted

Yes they've shifted, but the author implies that the success in the workforce
needs more rigour than school. It's the complete opposite. Your stuff needs to
work in school, and your prof will grade it accordingly. In the workforce, the
person 'grading' your work will likely be a product owner who just wants to
get the ticket closed. You will hear things like:

* "Let's do an MVP."

* "Let's focus on the happy path."

* "How hard can it be? You're just adding a button."

* "Let's close the ticket and we can create a new ticket if we need to."

You will not hear:

* "This is important, so get it right."

* "Your code was wrong. Let's discuss"

You'll often be stuck with code that you know is flawed, that you want to fix,
but the organisation won't give you time to fix it until it's too late.

~~~
jdsully
Depends on where you work. My time at Microsoft was much closer to what you
said I will not hear.

There was a parable they used to use in training about how a young developer
found a flaw that would only happen “one in a million” times - not worth
fixing. An older developer does the math on how many times the feature might
run across the total userbase and found we’d be annoying millions of users.

Microsoft did have a pseudo hazing ritual where you were forced to setup your
own machine. I was surprised how many developers couldn’t do that. I was
further surprised that ability to do so wasn’t correlated with skill. Being
able to find help if you didn’t know was very highly correlated though.

~~~
SwiftyBug
Do you mean you were forced to assemble your computer, part by part?

~~~
jdsully
They were pre assembled from DELL or HP. You had to take everything out of the
boxes hook up monitors, etc. The hard part was installing the OS, drivers, and
getting your build environment going. One very excellent developer did not
know what a driver was. It was that experience that forced me to reevaluate my
biases.

I had a few friends there in the late 80s/early 90s apparently at that time
everyone watched with great anticipation to see if you could figure out the
IRQ settings.

------
gonzo41
This is a bit wishy washy but generally scans true. For a newbie 2 and 6 are
what I'd consider the main points.

2\. You will not get as much help as you need \- Because you're the new kid
and they are dropping you on a legacy configuration job. Welcome to support
baby. This ain't FAANG. You're not getting help because no body knows how to
deal with what you looking after.

6\. You won't understand everything you're doing And truthfully neither will
your peers. Someone will understand saml, they will do the saml and you'll try
not to mess it up. Someone will understand the pipeline well, and you'll try
not to mess it u. Some will understand the container system etc.

My own hard truth: 8\. If you write doco it will be something you can show you
boss that will set you apart. Writing is hard. Expressing technical ideas in
writing is very hard.

~~~
qayxc
> Writing is hard. Expressing technical ideas in writing is very hard.

That.

I'm always baffled by the amount of positive feedback a well written document
or well-structured presentation can get you as opposed to weeks of hard work
and craftsmanship that no non-technical person is ever going to notice.

~~~
finnthehuman
The work that will impress the most is usually found at the boundaries between
skillsets, not in the nitty-gritty of one feild.

It's the bikeshed problem in reverse. Nobody can understand your reactor
design well enough to be impressed by the impressive things you did. They can
have their socks knocked off by your bikeshed though. Even if your reactor
design would get positive feedback from fellow reactor designers and your
bikeshed is a laughing stock among bikeshed builders.

Not to say that technical writing is frivolous or lower skilled as bike sheds
are to reactor design, this is just the go-to story about approachability.

------
cosmiccatnap
This sounds like a dad trying to tell his kid how hard it was for them growing
up. None of these bullets are a promise and most of them are pretty
condisending and seems to just be a rant about all the things that didn't work
out for him but that feels like it's because he was expecting to have his hand
held alot more which is something I've never assumed.

~~~
lol768
>it's because he was expecting to have his hand held alot more which is
something I've never assumed

If anything I've found I feel more supported at work than I ever did at
university. Hand helping? No. But I can ask questions if I've spent a while on
something and am totally stuck, we're generally all working towards common
goals on projects so we'll collaborate and try to help each other. I also get
regular feedback at code review time.

Huge contrast to my time at university where for some courses lecturers
wouldn't turn up to their own office hours, or answer emails. Useful feedback
was generally scarce, occasionally not provided at all and it was difficult to
remedy failure.

~~~
karatestomp
Agreed. Work is in most ways easier than school. If you're lucky enough to
find yourself in a highly sane and functional organization (at the level you
deal with it, at least) it's life on fucking _easy mode_.

High school's probably the hardest time of my life so far by a long shot, and
I'm entering middle age. So, so much work, very little of it of any value to
me or to others (and I have a pretty expansive view of what sorts of education
are valuable, I'm not a "if it's not part of my narrow field I don't care
about it, who needs the humanities" sort), terrible hours, high stress.

Even college was easy by comparison—15 hours of classes plus 15 hours of
homework and studying (unless you fuck up selecting classes or get unlucky you
shouldn't have it worse than that, and may have it _much_ better) and often
waking up after the sun rises? Rarely having something assigned one day and
due the very next? Practically a vacation! High school was torture and I
wasn't even bullied or anything. Worse there were people telling me it's the
"best time of my life". No wonder kids are depressed.

~~~
CalChris
For me, HS was easy and college was brutal. But I agree that short of a
startup, work is much easier and should be.

