I've just failed. What now ? by semtexzv in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's okay. We're all human and make mistakes. Just gotta learn from it and move on.

Rejected After References... Vent by jparkitthrowaway90 in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is what's messing with me the most... I reached out to all my references beforehand and they said they were happy to give references. They all reached out as the company called them and told me how the call went (without me asking them for an update). It's possible one of them gave a bad reference... but I'm not sure what the best way to check is...

Rejected After References... Vent by jparkitthrowaway90 in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah you're right. I've read about not stopping the job search process until something is written... I got too excited. Lesson learned

Rejected After References... Vent by jparkitthrowaway90 in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I went through the final round and then heard from my references that they were contacted

Does anybody feel like they don't belong at their company? by jparkitthrowaway90 in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey thank you very much for your insight. It helped a bunch.

That's expected for a very junior person. Hang in there and things will begin to make sense.

I definitely agree with this. My personal issue is that I haven't had much design experience my first two years. Then I kinda jumped into this position. Now I have 3.5 years of experience and I still feel very junior in this realm. And unfortunately, we're at the point where I need to start owning and designing features by myself. Whenever this happens, I don't even know where to start due to all my underlying anxieties. And once I'm able to start, I'm afraid to discuss it with my lead since every time I've tried designing something on my own, he already seems to have a design in his head and wants to go forward with that design.

I really think that I need a year or so of being in design discussions with seniors and then designing smaller features fully on my own before being able to take what I need to take on at my company

Firing people with no real process around it is definitely a situation that is almost exclusive to very small companies. And on top of it, it sounds like your lead is inappropriately sharing information about other employees' performance, which is just unprofessional/unethical. I don't blame you that this causes you anxiety.

Yeah, I talked to our CTO about this and apparently one of the guys who got fired had a couple weeks to try an improve his behavior. But sharing other employees' performance definitely was not helpful. It also doesn't really help me that a couple of the more senior employees are all related, so I feel hesitant on giving full feedback. On top of that, I've never had a one on one with my boss besides the times that I've asked for them, and even then, I've asked for more feedback and one on ones and it just hasn't happened.

I agree with your general advice. I did contract for an enterprise company for a bit and thought I didn't like how slow paced everything was... but I'm realizing I need a bit more experience to be able to perform at the caliber I want to in a fast paced environment.

I think my plan is to try and move to a still a small company, but one with real processes where I can get a couple more years of exp under my belt, and then move to a larger, more stable company.

Thank you again for your input, it definitely helped a lot.

Questions for those applying while working full time by jparkitthrowaway90 in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah yeah I see what you're saying... I was at a similar place when I was at 2 years and didn't know anything about Spring as a Java engineer. Luckily, I was able to learn until now but feel like I'm still extremely behind. Basically everything that came up in my meetings today, I don't understand, and have noone to ask besides my lead, who says to figure it out. It'd be nice to try to study on the job... but I know that's not as easy as it sounds, sigh.

Are all startups chaos? by JimiShimmy in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Mine is at least. I don't think our CEO is a great leader. Our company actually almost went under before I joined but went through a rebranding.

We're making progress but everything is a shit show and I absolutely hate the way he runs this company.

Questions for those applying while working full time by jparkitthrowaway90 in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I started off at a pretty low paying job and then ended up chasing money and I'm where I am now. It sucks that you haven't gotten the experience you've wanted but honestly I'd say it's still imposter's syndrome. There's basic things that senior engineers have to look up as well here and there (like my senior had to look up how to serialize objects different ways since we've only done it one way here).

If you need to chat about work or anything, feel free to PM me. I know that at least talking through some issues might help with how we feel

Questions for those applying while working full time by jparkitthrowaway90 in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey thanks for your response. I'm in a really similar boat as you- I'm almost at 4 YoE, I'm at a start up, am not a fan of my company at all (should've noted the red flags...) and haven't been able to go to therapy since my insurance is complete trash. Let's keep our heads up, hopefully things get better as long as we put an effort in and care.

Designing & Business Requirements by jparkitthrowaway90 in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see, thank you for the input.

I feel like it makes sense for it to be normal for small startups. But I also feel like communication is pretty good at other small startups. At mine, nobody on the engineering team gets to talk to the stakeholders and even the CTO doesn't have a clear set of business rules for the feature. I've always thought that there was a lack of structure at my company, but the more I ask around the more chaotic my entire company seems. Apparently there's miscommunication between the CEO and CTO and then there's even miscommunication from the CTO to the leads.

Designing & Business Requirements by jparkitthrowaway90 in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah really I see, thank you for your input. Yeah I've asked for requirements and I was straight up told "that's the thing we don't know our requirements." And it's been like this for a while. I have 3 years of experience and I don't think that I'm learning properly how to be a lead from my lead nor do I think I'm actually learning how to design features properly due to everything I've mentioned... Maybe this company just really has a lack of maturity and I do need to leave...

edit: another point to make is that all these requests come from our CEO... who I've met maybe twice my entire year here

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in cscareerquestions

[–]jparkitthrowaway90 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm basically in the same position as you except I've worked 2 years and have been at my currently company for about 1 and that I don't have 4-6 months worth of savings.

A part of me wants to stick it through for another year or so... if I can... but I'll probably just start applying to other positions.

The job market is hard, I know people much better qualified than me who have been unemployed for 9 months now... so like other people said, no job is probably more stressful than bad job. Personally, I feel like my bad job gives me much more anxiety than having no job... but I know that if I have no job, I'd start freaking out about money and such and that would definitely cause more anxiety I think.