I am a Libra. And I fight for balance.
Four years ago, I started my very second job as a software quality analyst at an IT company, after I resigned from the first job that I’d landed about 7 years ago. Four weeks ago, I handed in my resignation letter and I am going to start my next job as a mobile developer in two weeks.
I was too distracted in the last few months by the idea of becoming a sensational software developer by the end of the year. The idea itself might not sound crazy, but the desire of wanting to get it done within the short time frame is killing me.
The desire derived from the toxic working environment.
Despite being a mobile developer for less than 2years, I’ve managed to follow the way to self-taught and skill-up myself to be able to work as a developer. I was hoping that I could find an experienced developer within the same team, who also be willing to train me to be more confident in technical decision-making. However, One major obstacle that I observed was the lack of patience from the mentor that I chose, the communication between this senior developer and myself could soon go in the direction where the technical problem is not there anymore, rather the information conveys system between us failed.
Arguably speaking, explaining a fairly complicated coding issue in a way that people can easily understand can be challenging. In fact, I often feel guilty about not being able to grasp the meaning of the words quickly enough. To make the conversation becomes productive, I think that a question list would be helpful. Soon, it ended up with criticism comments like, the question is not even valid. To make it worse, the time that I used to prepare the questions are often questioned to be wasteful.
I tried to work solo and come up with a solution. However, the review comments from the senior developer can be quite demoralizing. It is not helpful in any way, but only reveals and emphasizes that I, being a junior developer, am not even close to where I am supposed to be.
For a few months, I’ve been staring at the laptop screen far too long and only trying to figure out three questions:
Is becoming a self-taught software engineer so hard?
Does the process have to be this hard?
Where exactly is the hardship coming from?
Surely that I am able to work as a software developer right at this moment, which means I am qualified to take this role, which also means that my self-taught approach worked in a way to help me get there. But when I actually get there, and the team support and mentoring process become crucial to my learning path, things become lingering and difficult to handle. Not because the technical issues are complicated, not because the computer science language pops up every now and then is obscured. The complication is finding the right way of doing things, such as, how to communicate with a person who is in need of help with learning needs, and how to show caring and empathy to a person who is in need of help with learning needs.
I’ve tried so many different ways to improve the communication between me and this senior developer. In the end, I found, simply say F*ck off to the type of unwillingness and egoism who is not even trying to show a little respect for what people do in a professional working environment, that might just do the work.
I was there and struggled about understanding one line of code 2years ago. I was there and struggled about catching up with a basic understanding of mobile app development knowledge 3years ago.
However, to come to the way where I am now, time is essential. Training a person to be a good engineer needs time.
I survived on the battlefield where so many people are all fighting for becoming good programmers. Well, I shall say, I survived for now. This battle will be an ongoing event. But I think the fundamental important matter, is to find the inner balance and keep the trust in myself. After all, the beneficiary of this learning journey is me.
I hope that whoever reads this article might have experienced the same thing at work. Don’t give up. As one of my sensational technical leaders said, it is hard to learn to program, the reward is cheerfulness when achieving the goal.