What Nobody Tells You When You're a Junior Developer

Hooray! You’ve landed your dream job and you can now proudly call yourself a Junior Developer. The future looks nothing but bright and your awesome life story is underway. But now the hard part actually begins. Here’s how you can stay on top of things with some useful tips I wish I knew when I was in your shoes as a junior developer.

Not so long ago, I was where you might be right now. You either got a promotion at your current company or you got hired at a different place. No matter how you got here, you are now a junior developer, an aspiring software engineer and a brave new world lays before you.

But do not fool yourself: thing are going to be stressful, not fun, and maybe even annoying. Here’s a list of tips every junior developer should know in order to handle these situations:

1. Don’t get discouraged by daunting tasks

One of the first things you’ll experience as a fresh junior developer is a little bit of fear of the unknown. You will be asked to work on tasks which, at first sight, might look like the most difficult things you ever had to accomplish. In that moment, you might feel a little hesitant and may want to avoid taking on such endeavours.

The key here is to understand that no matter how complicated or tricky a task might look you are now a developer and you do have all the skills necessary to solve it. Sure, you won’t be able to properly estimate how long it’s going to take and the end result will not be perfect, but you will get the job done.

Carefully slice the task into smaller pieces, then arm yourself with a considerate amount of patience and concentration and everything will fall into place.

2. Don’t get cocky

Once you get the hang of things, you might start to feel way too confident for your own good. This type of attitude might cloud your judgement, affect the relationships with your teammates and it could actually make you perform worse as a developer.

So now would be a good time to snap back to reality and realize that there is still much to learn. Humbleness is, after all, a crucial quality that everyone should posses.

3. Respect and trust your elders

Since the dawn of man, no words have been mentioned more frequently in tribal societies than those above. And guess what, they still very much apply today, especially in dev teams.

I understand, you do have the urge to challenge everything and to question any form of authority. That’s part of what makes you a good junior developer. But you also have to admit the fact that a senior developer who’s been at it for at least a couple of years has a ton of valuable experience.

You should try taking that into account the next time you get into an argument. He or she has already been where you are and sometimes you simply need to go with the follow and trust his or her instinct when an important decision needs to be made.

4. A junior developer must pay attention to details

This goes hand in hand with no. #1 on the list and it’s one of the most important aspects you’ll have to grasp during your first months as a junior developer.
You will have a tendency to rush things and if nobody’s there to hold you back, you’ll go on a dark path that may lead to a major failure.

So even though projects have deadlines, and managers might put some unnecessary pressure on your shoulders, try to keep your head together and don’t overcommit. Learn and build code at your own pace and make sure that each line you write has been carefully analysed and understood.

In this phase of your career, reliability and knowledge gathering are much more important than speed. Your boss or your clients will be delighted to see that you’re gradually growing and that you’re a person they can count on in any situation. Speed is an attribute that comes naturally with experience so don’t worry too much about it as long as you’re on the right path.

Try asking for help as much as possible from your colleagues, start building a solid base in code standards, comment any piece of code you feel you might not understand one week from now and everything should work out just fine.

Even though being a junior developer might be one of the most stressful situation you’ll ever have to face, it’s also one of the most gratifying and rewarding jobs out there. You’ll get to build things that hundreds, thousands or even millions of people will use and enjoy every day.

So there you have it: a list I wish I had when I started my journey as a junior developer. If you have any other tips and suggestions of your own, please add them in the comment section below.

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