So where am I actually working? 👷‍♂️

So I said I am working for Master of Malt but who actually are they? Well they're they UK's biggest Gin and Whisky distributor and you can quickly begin to imagine why I am calling this a dream job💭. So before we go on, let me clarify, no I sadly don't get to taste the drinks, however there are some very nice perks of the job 😉 They are a really cool company to work for though as their core beliefs are very inline with how I think and the culture of the people there are very let loose and wear their personality on their sleeve. Something I really find easy to integrate with which ties in nicely to my next point.

The team

The team I am a part of (the dev team) is a team of ~30 people and honestly, it sounds like a lot but it really isn't. Full of really amazing people who are great to chat to and willing to lend a hand if they aren't too busy. I have had moments where I didn't know who to go to and someone has always helped me. Shout out to Manny and Joao who have been stars ⭐ in helping me get settled.

That being said, how's the job?

Honestly, in this first week, I have had moments where I questioned why I was hired for the job. The stack that is used is Very .NET heavy. With ASP.net, .NET core and a hell of a lot of SQL 🤦‍♂️ Like so much SQL. I am comfortable with Python, JavaScript, Java and SQL but something about a shit tonne of C# all at once makes you panic when you have always been operating under the assumption that C# is just posh boi Java. However this doesn't mean that I have don't feel like this job isn't for me. Again, this is a dream job. I am starting to wrap my head around all the syntax differences and I hate to say it but I might just be starting to love ♥ C#. The things you can do like LINQ and the way you can implement getters and setters, they are just awesome and there isn't things like that in Java.

The impact I have had so far

In my first week, I was assigned 4 tickets. I also created 1 ticket. I have 2 merged pull requests 😁 that tidied up a readme and created a doc on confluence as well as updating the local config files to reflect some architecture changes. These are both small tasks and while if this was a normal repo on my GitHub I wouldn't have even brought them to your attention but the fact that it will have an impact on onboarding new people to the dev team makes me feel like they are good contributions😇. I also have 2 PR's in QA, including one that actually impacts prod 😲 After finding out on the start of my second week that one of my one month goals was to get something in to prod, I was very happy as I almost felt like I was over achieving.

My advice to people starting placement or a new dev job...

So on my first day I rewatched a talk that one of my good friends Nathaniel Okenwa gave at You Got This Conf called Making your first days count in which he talks about starting at Twilio and how the first few months can be a minefield. It's 💯% worth a watch and inspired me to take a productive approach to how to tackle issues that you face when starting at a new company. My key takeaways from my first week though are:

• No one expects anything of you from your first couple of weeks
• You were hired for more than just your ability to code, you are a person who can bring value to the business in more than just cost saving through efficient code
• Focus on building a list of people who you can go to if you have problems
• Code isn't everything, you can learn syntax, paradigms and frameworks
• ASK QUESTIONS. If you don't know something, ask. No one will think less of you and people will actually respect it.

Going forward! ➡

Like Nathaniels talk, I am going to reflect on my progress as I continue in the job at the 2 week mark, the 30 day mark, the 60 day mark and then 100 day mark. I am also going to speak with my line manager and my report and see if I can get a list of goals drawn up so that I can hit milestones in progress and lessen my fear that I am just a waste of resources 😅 I joke, it is part of developing a developer and is a really crutial thing to be able to set goals and achive them as you can grow and reflect as you go.

Hope you are well and I'll check in soon!

Tom Misson