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I was happy to get a job with salary and benefits when I had no "real" work experience, but it turns out this is a pretty frustrating place to be. You know tha

I was happy to get a job with salary and benefits when I had no "real" work experience, but it turns out this is a pretty frustrating place to be. You know that old phrase "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member" well right now for you that applies for employment. Any place that is willing to hire you with 0 experience and 0 education, has something wrong with it enough to make them willing to take what they can get. Basically I would recommend a two prong attack. Start looking for a new job, you are slightly more marketable now that you have some experience, and since you are currently employed you can be a little more picky about work conditions etc. Second, improve what you can. They don't use automated testing at work? Build it anyway but keep it out of the repo. Don't have a repo? Set up mercurial on your box. Since those kind of places tend to not do rigorous code reviews you might be surprised what kind of freedom you have because of the poor work conditions. Find the places your boss doesn't pay attention and improve those, automate the build, automate deployment, write little tools that make your life better, etc.

rquantz 16y ago
You are right on the money -- I had that very quote in mind as I was writing (gotta love the Marx brothers). You're also right about the lack of code reviews. I've been able to sneak in a few things that would probably be frowned upon. But there's a limit to how much I can pad my timesheets to hide extra things (though I say this as I've wasted... how much time? ...here today), and the kind of refactoring that would make it possible to add tests to our mix of classic ASP spaghetti with a smattering of C#, webforms, etc., would definitely not go unnoticed. But I offer excuses. You're totally right about this and it's what I need to do to stay sane while I look elsewhere. It's either that or compulsively read HN whenever I get the chance.
- stonemetal 16y ago
  I wouldn't pad the time sheet, I would just do it differently. Don't refactor the whole code base to add unit tests. Just try to write new code that is capable of being automatically tested don't worry about hitting 100% just try to get some of your tests automated. No one is expecting you to turn the house in to a lean mean modern development machine. Just trim a little fat here and there. Get a feel for what you are learning about modern development so you can see how it works for you.

rquantz 16y ago

You are right on the money -- I had that very quote in mind as I was writing (gotta love the Marx brothers). You're also right about the lack of code reviews. I've been able to sneak in a few things that would probably be frowned upon. But there's a limit to how much I can pad my timesheets to hide extra things (though I say this as I've wasted... how much time? ...here today), and the kind of refactoring that would make it possible to add tests to our mix of classic ASP spaghetti with a smattering of C#, webforms, etc., would definitely not go unnoticed. But I offer excuses. You're totally right about this and it's what I need to do to stay sane while I look elsewhere. It's either that or compulsively read HN whenever I get the chance.

stonemetal 16y ago
I wouldn't pad the time sheet, I would just do it differently. Don't refactor the whole code base to add unit tests. Just try to write new code that is capable of being automatically tested don't worry about hitting 100% just try to get some of your tests automated. No one is expecting you to turn the house in to a lean mean modern development machine. Just trim a little fat here and there. Get a feel for what you are learning about modern development so you can see how it works for you.