As the title say I am looking for some advice.

I’m almost 6 months into my first role and it really isn’t what I expected.

I’m late thirties and always had an interest in tech, but personal circumstances and a late start in life left me unsure if I was good enough.

I did too many boot camps and in all them they discussed how in your first role you would get lots of support to help develop your skills.

I work for a small company < 10. I don’t feel I get the support I expected.

A lot of time the spec is kept in the lead engineers (owners) head and when given a task I get no timeframe, the task is given verbally with 100 words when I need 1000 words. It’s confusing to understand their vision so I’ll do something and either be told great or no that’s completely wrong.

If wrong I’m not called out and they will spend a little more time going over what they want.

The boss is always so busy that sometimes you feel like a burden asking for pointers.

The tech stack is great but as a mature company they have refined the process over numerous projects and the newest will start as a copy of the last one, keeping all the shared hooks and stuff, so naturally it’s second nature to them and I feel stupid.

I guess my question is is this normal and how do I write an email expressing these concerns and to gauge how I am doing?

As an aside, there is no remote work and no headphones in the office, even though nobody really talks about work that often. So when is a good time to start looking for your second role.

I feel like I flip between I am a god and can code anything and omg I know nothing show me the nearest bridge.

Thanks.

  • American_Badass [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, that sounds pretty normal, I guess. The time-frame part is probably based on how new you are as well as the nature of the task. I did quite a bit of that type of thing when I started, basically fixing tech debt, and small stuff.

    If it’s something you want to bring up, I think you expressed yourself pretty clearly. You could schedule some time with your boss to talk about it.

    What would frustrate me would be the rework I was doing. If you could maybe even set up a short weekly meeting? Show your boss what you’re doing and they could tell you if it’s the right track or not.