After a month, finally feeling like I belong there.
Looking back at where I started, and seeing where I am now is mind blowing. The first week of working my new job as a junior developer, I was ready to throw in the towel and never tell anyone I tried to be a software developer. It would have been my secret failure, and nobody would have to know. However, this past week of work, marking my one-month anniversary of being hired, I am astonished at how far I have come. No longer am I driving to work in horrendous traffic worrying that I will be given a task that would expose me as the fraud that I felt I was. Now, I am driving to work in horrendous traffic contemplating how I will tackle the assignment given to me. I feel like I am back in my sophomore year classes trying to find the best way to sort a linked list, and I have to tell you that it feels so good. I have one big reason for feeling this way, and that is the support that my colleagues have given me.
School gave us the fundamental knowledge of computer science concepts. It was a shotgun approach of data structures, database design, algorithm analysis, web development, and so many other things. However, none of these things really prepared us for the work that we would be doing once we spread our wings and dove headfirst into the industry.
Something that I have learned in my time at my new job is how collaborative the software engineering world is. Many times, the work that you do is directly related to what someone else is doing, and that is a catch-22. On one hand, there is the stress that you must get your work done in a timely manner as not to hold anyone else up. On the other hand, you have a person that is familiar with what you are trying to accomplish, and therefore have a person to go to when you need help. This collaboration is imperative to understanding the new concepts that school will inevitably miss, and being open to new approaches is a skill only learned by doing the work with other people. Having the fundamental knowledge is important, but what is far more important is how to interact with, and learn from, those around you.
I am extremely grateful for the capstone project because it gives us a chance to work with others. It gives us a chance to work through problems and has us come up with creative solutions that we might not have thought of if we were working by ourselves. This is the heart of working in the industry, and if there is one thing that this past month has taught me, it is the value of working with others.
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