If you already have your first position as a programmer, surely you are very motivated and want to go for everything. But after some time dealing with tight deadlines, changes (lots of changes), reports, and the odd boss or coworker, you can start to lose faith a bit.
There are many novice programmers for whom these first weeks can be a horror movie, entering a work environment with engineers, programmers and other technical profiles is generally much more challenging than we can imagine.
But don’t worry, the internet is full of solutions and one of them is to share the experience of those who have gone through this process and lived to tell about it, moreover, a bit of the experience of those who are currently at the top of those companies from which many novice programmers run away in their 4th week.
Let’s get to the topic:
1. Hours and hours sitting in the same position.
The problem.
In software development, sitting for long hours is part of the job. So is back pain, leg numbness, and neck sprains. When we are beginners, we may not be used to sitting for hours.
Various studies show that sitting for more than five hours a day can carry serious health risks, such as cardiovascular disease and obesity. It can also make you feel more tired during the day.
To do?
Stand up for a while!: try working standing up for a while, this relieves pressure on your back and improves circulation. It also makes you work more efficiently. It is simple but so useful that some companies are even investing in tables of variable height to facilitate this method of work.
Get some exercise: It is normal that people who work in offices often tend to feel tired and unmotivated for periods throughout the day. To deal with stress a bit, give your body a boost. A 30-minute walk or go for a short run before work can make you perform better throughout the day, as long as you make it a routine. If the excuse is time to exercise, we suggest you take short walks at lunchtime (if the place where you eat is within walking distance, try walking).
Get up from the desk every couple of hours maximum and walk a little around the office, look into the distance, do a few stretches, get some fresh air, 5 minutes can make a difference.
2. Stay up to date with technology
The problem.
Everything is progressing and both programs and programmers need to be updated. Tools, frameworks and libraries can go out of date very quickly and although some Front-End languages, platforms or frameworks take months or a year to show important updates, there are other aspects that are renewed incredibly fast.
Updating is fine, in theory now the program or tool is more efficient and makes the job for which it was created easier. but if you can be very sure of something, it is that the developers do not stop working for a second, so you must move quickly if you want to keep up.
To do?
We give you 3 suggestions in this sense:Take some time daily to learn new technologies for yourself: you don’t have to plan hours for this, with 30 or 40 minutes in which you can take a break within your day you can read about the updates, give them a hand and make your own opinion about it.
Keep up to date with the latest in your sector: It is even understandable that spending so many hours in front of the monitor means that reading is not on your list of priorities. But at this point we want to point out that being up to date with the latest programming trends will help you a lot. There are other programmers who are focused on making work easier and there are new developments on this topic all the time.
Try to take at least one good course a year: investing about 60 hours, once a year in a course can really make a big difference in terms of your knowledge, skills and even put you in direct line with that promotion you would like to obtain in your work. We suggest one for at least a year, online or in person.
3. Learn to communicate.
The problem.
When you are the new programmer in the company, you probably don’t know anyone in the office or even in the environment of programmers in your city. Hopefully, you may meet the friend who told you about the vacancy, but this new experience goes much further, you don’t even know the project manager assigned to you and the rest of the team, this may mean that you don’t want to talk to them about some issues, For example, what is related to the code, the hierarchical order of the company or those particularities of the work that sometimes make the difference in a team.
Poor communication for beginning programmers is a big problem. And if not attended to on time, it can cause conflicts in the workplace. You must be clear about the problems related to a project, and keep in mind that it is normal for a novice programmer not to know how to solve them or how to get help, if you cannot talk to your teammates it is something that can cost you your job.
Something very common in this aspect are code integration problems, which are practically impossible to solve, if you do not coordinate with your team members. It is something very common in development companies. Everyone on your team follows a scheduling strategy defined prior to your arrival that you are unfamiliar with. The result is that you will run into many code integration problems and you will even find yourself in situations where what you do to solve these problems may affect the work of others.
To do?
In your new job you need to understand that your communication skills must be worked on like your technical skills. Here’s where you can start:
Proactivity: Do not settle for asking only what is necessary, go further and encourage conversation with the rest of your team, we do not suggest that you be the life of the party, just go talk with your colleagues, know the way in which do things and how you think, it’s about integrating with the place you just arrived at.
Be constant: sometimes, you will not find the way to communicate effectively with your work team the first time, it is a whole process, and that is why you must be constant.
4. debugging The problem.
This is something that is going to happen more often than you think, you finally finish that project, you think everything is running 100%. But when you get there the next day, the QA results are a long list of bugs you have to fix.
Web forms don’t have a “cancel” button, error messages aren’t correct, and software has other bugs that cause user experience issues.
Starting the process of debugging all of this can be overwhelming, but when it first happens to you it’s like a horror movie. Some errors are easy to debug, others can be quite complex and there are those that nobody wants, which are those that force you to start over.
But you don’t have to worry, bugs are part of your job. As a programmer and getting good at how you deal with and solve them is the key to your success.
To do?
If you like sports just a little, you can understand that these sports stars are the result of a lot of practice, effort and perseverance. Applying this philosophy to the profession of the programmer, it can be said that you should try to anticipate the revision process.
Try to reproduce the error: it is better to start trying to see how the error arises, reproduce it, understand why it occurs. Before wasting hours trying to solve something that you don’t know why it’s happening. Many programmers jump right into the code to start debugging. Replicating what’s going wrong is a great way to get right to what’s failing.
Get help: This advice may seem obvious. But when projects have a critical deadline, a new programmer tends to panic first and think later. If you can’t reproduce a bug, seek help. The tester who found the bug can help you reproduce it and find a solution.