The talk WebOfficeHours - Ramping Up at Your First Developer Job by Mark Noonan is a 1-hour video with useful info for junior developers.
Here are my condensed notes:
First Week on the Job
- tedious computer setup using skills you never need in any other situation
- take notes for the next person
Imposter Syndrome
- remember they hired you on purpose
Communication
- you might get trained on some of the stuff you’ll need to do in your job
- BUT: people have no idea what other people have told you or not yet, so they might assume that you know XYZ, when nobody told you about it
Social Circle
- figure out what everybody does and where you fit
- smaller vs bigger team: in bigger teams there are more layers
- in quickly moving teams: it’s still not expected that you magically produce work, but you might have to stand up for yourself
Learning a New Codebase
- take a look at the most recent commits/work
Git (Version Control) && Jira (Ticketing System)
- the culture of how Git is used is often different (and might not be documented)
- make sure to ask how to approach version control
- workflows are always different: ask
Be a Little Cynical
- make sure that others see your effort
- don’t get stuck even on the things you were hired to do
Asking for Help Is a Superpower
Managing Frustration Is Your Job
- working as a developer is often hard
- learn how to be patient
Debugging
- learn how to debug (inspector, dev tools, break points)
Make a Lot of Notes
- ask a lot of questions
Don’t Be Too Shy in Meetings
- it’s ok to mostly hang back in meetings, but say at least one thing if you can
Carving Out “Your Job”
- try to find the things you’re good at
You Can Do Anything if You Have Enough Time
- your motivation for asking for help is not that you can’t get it to work — it’s that it’s not worth your time to spend too much time on learning all the stuff
- you will often need to work on something that you haven’t worked on before