Now that you have secured a job offer for work as a software developer, what should you expect? I’ll let you know. From company to company, the logistics of what a developer does and how a developer interacts with his or her team members varies. However, there are some things that remain the same and that can be detailed through the software development cycle.
When you first get to your job, you will be doing onboarding and meeting your team members. Teams can be as small as 4 and as big as 15. You will be given your laptop, login credentials, documentation for any technologies that is used by the company you work for, an overview of the code base, and overview of the application or project you will be working on. During the first three months, you will not be expected to contribute much since you are expected to just start familiarizing yourself with everything. The company does not want to overwhelm you with too much information at once, so they allow this time period for growth.
Once you feel comfortable with having a vague understanding of the codebase and how to use an integrated development environment (IDE), they will start giving you small tasks to work on. These tasks are usually bugs. Fixing bugs will give you the confidence to feel like you are making meaningful additions to the codebase.
Through all the coding you will be doing, you will also be going to scrum meetings during a two week time period called a sprint. These meetings will include a daily standup, a retrospective, a sprint planning meeting, a grooming meeting, and a demo. The daily standup is an opportunity to talk about what you have done the day prior, what you will do on that current day, and any blockers you have so the appropriate person can help you. It might seem daunting at first, but you will get used to it.
As you are going through the development cycle with your team and once you feel ready to work on something other than bugs, you team will start giving you stories. These are basically tasks to implement features within the application. You will be included in design meetings to map out what these tasks entail. Everything will be fine and if you have a good team, they will help you out. That is basically what the job will look like as your time goes on there at your company.
Now that you have an understanding of what to expect at the job, you can prepare yourself. Enjoy and try not to overwork!
