What is your experience when you are new to a software development team

Created: 2022-07-30
Tags: #fleeting

Day One

Set up your machine, clone some repositories, and get things running locally.

The biggest thing for me is always “how can I contribute?” and after a couple cracks at day one I have an answer - write everything down. If you do that, you’ve just contributed IMMENSELY to the team and company as a whole.

No one has everything documented perfectly for setting up a local environment from day one because guess what? You only do it once. This leads to a ton of avoidable interruptions in the form of unnecessary questions because the answers aren’t written down.

Days two through 15

Fix bugs, write tests, ask questions, and pay attention.

No one likes fixing bugs, lots of people hate writing tests, some people are embarrassed to ask questions and pretty much no one pays attention all the time.

• Fixing bugs is a gentle way to introduce you to the codebase and the product. You can’t extend a product until you understand what it does and how it works.
• Unit tests are essentially a spec for the application (or should be). Learn to love them, even when they burn you they’re helping you.
• Asking questions leads to knowledge transfer. Answering questions forces you to consider what you think you know. It benefits both parties tremendously.
• Paying attention should be self explanatory. I NEVER mind explaining something once, maybe twice - but if you ask me the same question six times in two days I’m going to regret recommending we hire you. Don’t waste your new colleagues’ time.

Beyond week 3

You should be fully integrated into the team. Sure, there’s still a TON you don’t know but you should know enough to be comfortable speaking up in meetings and making suggestions (and still asking questions, never stop doing that). Even if those ideas get shot down, if you’re at a company worth working at its just another opportunity to learn.

This is meant to be basic guideline based on my experience. If yours doesn’t match it exactly that’s ok too - we’re not the same person, we work at different companies, and probably live in different places.