Reflections of a junior developer who changed jobs 7 months in
By: Negin Melina S
Tags: Junior Developer, Web Development, Engineering, Bootcamp, Job Hunting

I’ve been a frontend developer for a over a year and a half and switched jobs 7 months into my first developer role. I’ve learned during this time that some of the anxieties I’ve had about my trajectory as a developer were common among my peers. I hope that by sharing my feelings and my actions that I can help alleviate some of these anxieties for other junior developers!

My first (understandable) mistake

I think your first developer job plays an important role in setting the pace and trajectory for your career (with a caveat that I’ll get into 😇). With that being said, I think it’s unrealistic to tell juniors to be picky with their first job (especially when you don’t know their situation). And frankly speaking, there’s a ton of really shitty first jobs.

There’s also many factors that go into making your first job fulfilling, many of which you can’t reasonably figure out during the interview process, especially if you don’t have a previous developer job to compare to. I’ve had interviews with several companies and did not interview any of them critically. I think this is natural for many juniors, there’s excitement and stress involved when you’re interviewing early into your career. It’s easy to forget you should be interviewing the company too. I felt thankful to be getting interviewed in the first place! I was desperate to get my foot in the door after being ghosted and rejected from over 80 companies and that hindered my ability to assess a company critically.

My first job as a developer

I accepted an offer from a company that looked great on paper. Frontend role — check. Good pay — check. Good benefits — check. The tech stack was quite outdated and I knew that when accepting the offer. A ton of companies (especially SaaS) have outdated tech stacks and as long as I’m learning and contributing meaningfully then I’ll be happy (and who knows, maybe I could help refactor the tech stack eventually!)

Unfortunately, a month into the job I felt unfulfilled and was becoming increasingly depressed. I felt like I was just pushing pixels and the work I was doing did not feel meaningful. I remember dreading every single standup. Every night before a work day, I would try to think about what I contributed and how that was helping the company and go to sleep feeling anxious. I felt like an imposter. To a certain degree this is natural, we put a ton of pressure on ourselves and imposter syndrome is rampant in our field. I would read countless threads about other people experiencing the same thing and I told myself this is normal. It can takes months for a junior to onboard and even a year until they contribute to the code meaningfully. But that wasn’t the case for me.

Quitting my first job, 7 months in

There were many factors that contributed to me entertaining the idea of looking for a new role so early into my first job. I kept reading about how I’d be looked down on for leaving a role in under a year and some even say 2 years. I told myself to stick it out for a year, that the longer I stay at this role the better I look on paper and maybe things will get better. I’d like to give a big (or small cause my hands are tiny) middle finger to those people for contributing to my (and many others) unhappiness. You do not owe a company anything, especially if it’s at the cost of your mental health. There is nothing wrong with leaving a role that is not fulfilling you.

3 months in, I was working on side projects almost every day after work. I knew I had to do this to be a competitive candidate. The work I was doing was not what was expected of frontend developers in 2020. The mentorship I was seeking was sporadic and only touched on HTML/CSS. I felt no ownership and I did not feel challenged. Some of my pull requests did not get reviewed for months, some were fixed by my mentor without my knowledge, and I was told to stop grabbing so many bug fix tickets because I was overwhelming our pull request process. What was suppose to feel like a safe environment to fail in, felt like an environment where it was safe to fail because I was not doing work. There was no roadmap, no goal setting, and no long-term plan for me and how I wanted to grow as a developer. Despite going through several people and voicing my concerns, they were ultimately ignored or forgotten about. A part of me knew this wasn’t ideal but at the same time this wasn’t a terrible job. I got paid on time, I became good friends with a coworker, and I had good work life balance. But I knew the longer I stayed, the more I was sabotaging myself as a developer and I was getting extremely burnout from all the side projects I was working on after work.

Interviewing (again)

I started actively interviewing 6 months in and I won’t lie it was awful. I was working, creating side projects, studying for tech tests and using my vacation days for interviews. I was burning out fast. I remember breaking down multiple times and being the most anxious I had been in years. I kept telling myself the same thing I told myself when I first graduated — this is temporary and future me will thank me. But current me was drowning. I honestly wish I had some advice to give here but I don’t. I’d love to hear how others managed interviewing again so early in their first job while juggling all of the above.

On a positive note, I had a much better idea of what to look for in a company and I knew what I wanted. I no longer saw companies with rose tinted glasses. I saw flags as red flags (thanks Bojack). I was able to be picky and I turned down interviews I thought were unreasonable (I’m looking at you full-stack tech tests that can take up to a week to complete) and I declined offers. I never thought I’d be in a position to negotiate and decline offers. I also asked a ton of questions. Prior to even interviewing at my current company, I recall asking 10+ questions to who would soon by my mentor. I knew I didn’t want to look for a job again (it really sucks lol). So I was picky, something I wish I was when I first looked for a developer job but I know ultimately is not always feasible.

When I mentioned earlier that your first developer job plays an important role in setting the pace and trajectory for your career — that was a half truth. The reality is, your first job most likely won’t be your best job because you don’t even know what you want and you don’t know what you don’t know. I knew nothing about processes and how wacky and outdated they were at my previous company. I sometimes think I spent more hours writing user stories than coding (but that’s okay because it pushed me to ask questions about processes and what sprint planning entails, something I never thought about when I first interviewed.)

What you do with that dissatisfaction is what will set the pace and trajectory for your career. So in a sense…your first job does play an important role in your trajectory because you’re learning about what you value and what to look for in your next role!

Current job and reflections

Going from my first job to my second job was a shock. There were so so many differences, so many adjustments and the vast majority of them were significant improvements. I’m thankful I asked so many questions before my interview because despite the shock, I knew in my gut during the first week that I made the right call changing jobs.

I joined a startup so I had an idea of what it would be like — more ownership, wearing different hats, and moving fast. It was extremely intimidating but it was also so exciting. My mentor at the time, did an amazing job of mentoring me and I could feel his passion for programming and dissecting his brain was some of the best learning and fun I’ve ever had at a job. The tech stack was more modern and I got my hands dirty in my first week. I saw my code live in our app in a week and it wasn’t just a small CSS bug fix. It felt amazing!

I remember my partner telling me how I seemed so bright and excited during my first few months at my new job. I remember feeling the joy of programming again and most of all I felt supported. During my first few 1:1s with my manager, she had me setup goals with her and I felt inspired by her (and I still do!) I felt comfortable voicing my concerns with her and I felt heard. Even in the first month, I felt like she was in my corner and she genuinely cared for my well being and learning. In 10 months, I shipped out so many features that I never thought would be possible. I never thought I’d learn so much in such a short amount of time. I went from having no work experience and an arguably basic understanding of React and React-Native, and absolutely no knowledge in Redux (minus trying to bulldoze through a tech test), Redux-Sagas, and TypeScript to shipping out small features in a month, medium features with help from my mentor in 3 months, and my first large solo feature at the 6 month mark.

There were definitely hurdles however, I had trouble disconnecting from work. I saw how passionate so many of my coworkers were and it resonated with me. I never wanted to disappoint even though it sometimes caused me immense anxiety and stress. I’m still navigating through these feelings and learning how to manage my time but this time around I have my coworkers and my manager supporting me.

Creating your own mentorship

I wanted to touch on one final point that I feel like a lot of juniors struggle with. I feel so blessed to have had the mentorship that I had and the mentor who onboarded me during my first 6 months. I wouldn’t have done it any differently. I think people who know how to “dumb down” technical content and teach it to juniors are rare in the tech industry. He knew when I was frazzled and always had the right thing to say. He knew when to let me struggle and was great at giving me breadcrumbs. He empathized with me and reflected on his own time as a junior and it lessened my imposter syndrome. I remember confiding in him that I felt disheartened reading the official documentation on Redux-Sagas and him telling me the documentation isn’t easy to reason about. He was passionate and cared about code quality as well as the work culture and that resonated with me.

When my mentor left the company, I was extremely anxious and felt like I was about to drown. I thought I was fooling everyone and soon people would realize I was an imposter hiding behind my mentor’s shield. It didn’t help that I had a large time-sensitive project looming. It truly felt like a sink or swim situation. This is where I realized that I can find my own mentorship. I went from having sporadic and unfulfilling mentorship from my first job to having the opportunity to dissect my coworker’s brain with scheduled pair programming sessions at my current job. Unfortunately, most junior developer roles don’t provide direct mentorship. From speaking with many peers, a lot of developers are stretched thin and teaching is not something everyone is cut out to do. But over the last 4 months since my mentor left, I knew I could still find mentorship — although not as direct. I started to utilize our frontend slack channel to ask questions, something I was scared of doing while my mentor was at my company.

At a certain point, I feel like I relied on my mentor too much and that to a certain extent may have hindered my growth. Although I grew so much in the 6 months he was mentoring me, I grew even more in the 4 months that I was struggling. I think struggle is the best way to learn (to a certain extent). I was still getting mentorship through peer reviews, I was still able ask questions and pair with other programmers when I was blocked for too long. And more recently, I’ve been putting a larger effort in understanding how my coworker’s implement similar components rather than just referencing them for my own work. I think about how I can refactor existing code and how I can make my own code more performant. I noticed I was getting the same comments about avoiding anonymous functions in component props and saw we’ve been implementing useCallBack() instead. I was so excited the first time I implemented it and spent the night before bed trying to understand the intricacies of all the React hooks.

This is word vomit to say that even if you’re not getting direct mentorship, it’s possible to find your own mentorship (with the caveat that you’re still being supported!)

Final thoughts

Whew, I did not expect to write so much. I think being a junior developer is such an interesting time and everyone’s experiences are unique but we share a lot of similar anxieties (I didn’t know how common it was to be anxious about standups!) I hope some of my advice and experience can help other juniors navigate through unfulfilling jobs and general first job anxieties. I’ll never regret switching jobs so early and I hope that becomes more of the norm for unhappy junior developers. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @negicodes (I’d especially love to learn how similar or different your experience has been!)