In this article I will try to show what the first days at work as a Junior Java Developer may look like - sometimes it is funny, comical, and sometimes demotivating. I will describe three key elements that a junior programmer may encounter in the first days of work - recruitment (or rather the effect of recruitment), onboarding, and the equipment we receive or do not receive.
Recruitment – the effect of recruitment
After all, we were already hired and came to work. Well, after arriving at our new, dream job, we may find at least two extreme situations. We have been assigned to the project and we begin to implement it quickly and intensively. The second situation may be the lack of a project, i.e. we have not been assigned to any project or the project does not exist for us yet.
First project
We have been assigned to the project and what next? If a given project has documentation, we will probably have access to it and we will have to read it. However, it should be remembered that documentation is out of date at the time of its creation, because the only constant element in the system or code is change. Likewise, we should receive access to the source code repository.
No project
What if we are not assigned to any project? How is it even possible that we have been hired and there is no job or project for us? Sometimes this happens because, for example, recruitment for a given position is continuous and the cost of acquiring a new employee is higher than the cost of keeping a programmer without a job. I know it sounds weird, but sometimes it's true. Then we usually get a pile of documentation to read, or we have to get acquainted with a new framework. We can also be tasked with creating a PoC (Proof of Concept) solution.
Lack of equipment
Not being assigned to a specific project is not the strangest situation. Sometimes it happens that we do not get equipment to work with at all. This may seem completely absurd, but there may be several reasons for this situation. The budget for equipment is set much in advance and we may come to a period when there are no plans to purchase new equipment. It may also happen that the equipment is rotated between departing and incoming employees. In such a situation, we will have to wait until someone leaves the company, this is rather the practice of large corporations.
No supervisor or guardian
The lack of a project and equipment may also be related to the lack of a direct supervisor who will supervise our work, but also our development, which is the most important thing for a junior Java programmer. I have seen newly hired people sit without equipment for several weeks waiting for a project assignment and a supervisor. I would not be discouraged by this situation, because it is guaranteed that when we finally get to the project, at some point we will not complain about the lack of work, but rather about overtime.
Onboarding
Once we receive the project assignment and a supervisor, the onboarding process can begin, i.e. the process in which the new employee acquires knowledge, skills and behaviors in order to become an effective member of a given organization. In most cases, we will have to look for knowledge about the organization in which we work, i.e. what is the organization's culture, hierarchy, etc. The second, very different case may be a company in which everything is formalized and written down for the needs of onboarding a new employee.
We receive "our" computer
During the onboarding process, we will get "our" computer. I intentionally put the word our in quotation marks. In fact, we should not forget that it is the property of the company that hired us. True, if it is a laptop, we will be able to take it home with us.
There are several elements associated with having "our" computer:
- we have to take care of this computer (but, this is obvious),
- there will be a lot of monitoring software installed on the computer,
- at any time someone else will could use our computer,
- we will not be able to install any software.
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