by austinlyons on 7/29/13, 2:15 PM with 45 comments
by christopherslee on 7/29/13, 3:43 PM
That is not to say that there are problems that seniors shouldn't spend time mentoring junior folks on. In my experience though, some people never learned to do research on the internet in college, and almost want you to tell them how to write the code, line by line.
by t1m on 7/29/13, 3:06 PM
The best advice for a young Jr anything is to do the job you were hired for exceedingly well. If the words obnoxious or needy are ever used in the same sentence as your name, you are doing something terribly wrong.
by angersock on 7/29/13, 3:41 PM
On the engineering side of things, it's often that things are hard but tractable--there is a clear set of goals that need to be accomplished, and at least a somewhat reasonable dependency graph of objectives that can be inferred to reach those goals.
Over in sales and business, though? OH GOD everything's on fire--we have too many customers and not enough product, too few customers and too much engineering, a great opportunity for a strategic partnership, wait no that isn't panning out, nobody likes us fuck fuck fuck what do we do.
(And from what I've observed of sales and business folks, this sort of bipolar behavior is totally expected. They are in a deep, ongoing, and tumultuous relationship with your product and your customers, and things get crazy sometimes.)
As a junior engineer it can be really disheartening to learn that your company has few customers and the ones you do have hate your product for reason X (where X probably is nothing you have direct control over). Especially in a small company, business is a howling vortex of crazy that honestly as a junior engineer you probably don't have the experience to make sense of.
One of the most poignant lessons from Soul of a New Machine was that the Eagle team pulled off so much awesome work precisely because they were insulated from the rest of the company and allowed to focus on the engineering.
by verelo on 7/29/13, 2:54 PM
Learn as much as you can, but maintain a high level of respect for peoples time, including your own.
by ColinDabritz on 7/29/13, 5:53 PM
Take good notes. What meeting, when, where, with who? Who is in person/remote? Write as fast as you can, capture "todos", "next steps", follow up items of all kinds, important decisions. After the meeting, email the participants with your notes. Put them in your document repository (wiki, sharepoint, SCM if you must).
This way you provide value, people see you, and they see that you are paying attention. It also gives you good fodder to ask questions later, e.g. "What did XYZ term mean?", "Why was Laura asking about question Y?", "Did no one think of X, or was it obvious?"
Taking good notes is an art, and it's easiest when you are "just" listening.
by centrinoblue on 7/29/13, 3:11 PM
Get to work, it's what you're being paid for. Don't forget that.
by mu_killnine on 7/29/13, 3:13 PM
There's no shortage of things to learn in an organization and sometimes it's best to start in an area closer to you (see: with Sr. Engineers).
by joeframbach on 7/29/13, 3:07 PM
by xsmasher on 7/29/13, 5:10 PM
I DO want them to ask me about some company- or domain- specific tech, so I can save them a day of research with a two-minute explanation.
If I can unstick them when they are stuck, that's great. If they get stuck every fifth line of code, or on simple problems, that's terrible.
The advice to listen more than you talk is excellent. Soak up information and then take questions offline. You don't want to be "that guy" who holds important high-level meeting with newbie questions, or derail a business discussion with questions about engineering trivia.
by topbanana on 7/29/13, 4:53 PM
You don't need to be obnoxious or needy.
by temuze on 7/29/13, 6:06 PM
by paulwithap on 7/29/13, 2:55 PM
by michaelochurch on 7/29/13, 3:42 PM
One of the most infuriating things about companies is how slow they are when it comes to trusting people. (Actually, they're sluggish around all kinds of decisions. Try selling to the enterprise some time.) While companies do value initiative and curiosity in the abstract, the length of time (even in most startups) one has to spend at them is an order of magnitude longer than makes any sense at all.
If you're 6 months old in a company, but your manager only gets to spend 5% of his time with you (which is more than you'll typically get) then, from his perspective, you've been there for 1.3 weeks. You just got there, in his view. This really sucks, because it means a lot of time is wasted on the pokey track by people who feel like they could be advancing a lot faster (and are right).
Typically, it takes a couple years before you're allowed to show initiative or curiosity, or have opinions. The dues-paying period is a horrible waste of life, but that's how human organizations are. I don't think anyone has found a cure for it.
Being that obnoxious junior programmer is actually a terrible career strategy. Gaining credibility is often more potent than learning; there are a zillion people more capable of doing the top jobs than hold them at a given time, but only a few people acquire the organizational trust. Credibility, not capability, is the limiting factor. Learning general-purpose skills can be more useful than climbing a ladder (it's transferrable to the next job) but you don't have to step on toes to do that; while learning about an organization is less important than having it learn to trust you. (If you fail and get fired; everything you learned about the organization is useless.)
Now, the thing is that when a company is running well and there's plenty of work to do, the overperformer who is eagerly seeking work "above his grade" is tolerated. The problem is that, whenever things become a bit more uncertain or it becomes clear that not all peoples' ambitions will be satisfied, they're high-class trophy-fires with giant bulls'-eyes on their asses. They also tend to get flanked by same-rank colleagues; if there's some Little Eichmann out there who can gain managerial approval by showing you up as "distracted", then watch out. Remember that it will have nothing to do with actual performance, but perception, which is ruined by the above-grade work.
by krob on 7/29/13, 2:54 PM