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I feel I hit the job ready part and started to work as a software engineer and I think I'm about as productive as I cost the company. Actually I feel a little b

by erikb 12y ago

I feel I hit the job ready part and started to work as a software engineer and I think I'm about as productive as I cost the company. Actually I feel a little better than that and my colleagues a little worse than that, but I guess that's how everybody in the middle feels. The thing is, after that job ready upwards slope there is the next downswing. You're able to get something done, but what you envision is not what the company needs. You also realise that to be productive you need a lot of skills you never learned in school time at all, e.g. packaging, shipping code to customers, versioning, and actually create a tool that another person can, reading code of other people, and finally using the tools your coworkers build which are only marginally more productive than doing it manually or writing your own tools, and only after learning the arcane ways in that they are designed (much like the tools of your design, and quite different from the billion dollar applications you are used to in daily life). Also you will really become slower, because all the meetings and compromises drain your energy more than the coding, but there is no way around it if you work in a team. Is there another high coming after that? From looking at my coworkers it seems this down swing will last. tl;dr the job ready high is not the end.

zaphar 12y ago
Yes there is another upswing after that. But be aware some of the on the job skills are not unique to Software Dev. * How to run a meeting. * How to allocate Make time. * How to collaborate with other people. * How to understand business needs. All of these are skills you need in any white collar job. Learning them is a part of any job you might do. Even the software specific ones like: * Packaging * Shipping * Versioning * Tooling Are all going to be job specific. You'll find some of them to totally non portable and some of them will transfer just fine. The good news is that by now you'll have begun to hit a groove when it comes to knowledge acquisition and learning this stuff will get easier. The next high is when you start to recognize Process Patterns in the jobs you take on and how to best handle them. Or even which ones to avoid like the plague either by effecting change in the company or changing employers.

by erikb 12y ago

zaphar 12y ago

Yes there is another upswing after that. But be aware some of the on the job skills are not unique to Software Dev. * How to run a meeting. * How to allocate Make time. * How to collaborate with other people. * How to understand business needs. All of these are skills you need in any white collar job. Learning them is a part of any job you might do. Even the software specific ones like: * Packaging * Shipping * Versioning * Tooling Are all going to be job specific. You'll find some of them to totally non portable and some of them will transfer just fine. The good news is that by now you'll have begun to hit a groove when it comes to knowledge acquisition and learning this stuff will get easier. The next high is when you start to recognize Process Patterns in the jobs you take on and how to best handle them. Or even which ones to avoid like the plague either by effecting change in the company or changing employers.