Why do I feel useless and incapable of anything at my first job in my specialty?

Question

Career in IT

Hello, I need advice from adults and experienced uncles :D
In mid-July, I went on an internship at a company that integrates into an already finished product (automation of restaurant processes). The job title was "C#/.NET Developer". Before that, he did not work in his specialty, he only made labs and coursework to order. The problem is that I do not feel any pleasure from this work at all. In the early days, I dealt with the program's API to write my own modules for integration. During the day, they could switch to another task not related to programming (rather with technical support), and then say why I didn’t do it. The tasks that I was given were described in two words (for some reason, the senior developer thought that I understood all the abbreviations and technologies used that got along in the development team). Each task I had to ask again 5 times, and if a pitfall was revealed that I was not told about, then 5 more times.
Knowledge for the position of Junior C # with a head, but I just couldn’t cope with the tasks that they gave me, because I just didn’t know what and how it works, it works, where it comes from and where it is called, what it depends on, etc. It turns out that each task is constant questions, misunderstanding, moral pressure. For all the time, I only tightened up my knowledge of git and nothing more.
It is probably difficult to understand the essence of the question, but: is it possible to call the position "C# / .NET Developer" if I wrote a maximum of 10 lines during the month of the internship? After my first experience, I feel incapable of anything in programming. Left the internship.

Answer 1

If you do not observe the fast (which began today) - you can get drunk to relieve nervous tension. And then, from the bottom of my heart, send this office "by mother" and say, as I always say, "Let those employers who did not get us die of envy."
If writing code in itself does not bring you pleasure, it is better not to go to IT. Yes, the tales of gigantic salaries are based on reality. Yes, there are not enough specialists. But between you and all this there is a huge CROWD of semi-literate "shape slaps", artisans who are only capable of menial work. You will have to first become one of them, and then rise above them - if you can of course.
You are out of luck with the team, but such teams are no exception at all. One hundred thousand such teams, where there is fierce competition, where every day you have to prove to your “colleagues” that you are no worse than them, etc.
Yes, there are other commands. Where colleagues can tell, and the authorities do not cry for any reason. Search.
And most importantly, don't despair :)

Answer 2

The ability to understand other people's code, communicate with people and experience with end users are very important for modern collaborative development.
Life has given you a situation where you can get these skills.
Ask yourself questions:
- what can I do next time to get a more detailed problem statement right away? Clarify unknown terms?
- how can I extract the necessary information from the code and how can the IDE and debugger help me with this?
- where is the documentation and how to find it?
- can I use the version control system and the bug tracker to get more information? (Including people you can ask about)
- how would I write the code myself so that it would be easier for another beginner to understand this?
- was I understandable to users when I was doing support?
- how can the program and tools be changed so that such support requests do not arise in principle or are they easier to solve? Maybe make the messages clearer? Add logs? Add checks?
Even if you can't influence anything, answering these questions to yourself will make you a better programmer.

Answer 3

During the day, they could switch to another task not related to programming (rather with technical support), and then say why I didn’t do it.

1) Cant in the organization of work in the company.
2) You should not be coddled, all the details of how you work should not be remembered. If you have a problem - communicate with the manager directly.
And who will ask questions for you?
Figuring out a problem before starting work is one of the basic skills of a programmer.
Absolutely normal for a beginner.
Moreover, it is absolutely normal even for a senior who is just entering a new project for himself.
One of the typical skills of a programmer is to figure everything out.
Constantly, everyday.
This is fine.
Have you over-praised yourself on your resume for an hour?
You were expected to be more qualified.
No one will teach you but yourself.
Quite.
The trainee's business is to understand, to delve into. Especially the first month.
In general, the productivity of a programmer is by no means measured in the number of lines. About a month ago, I took 6,000 rubles for correcting the value of 2 constants for my work.
Entering the profession of a programmer is hard.
Entering and understanding at a new place of work is also not easy. Even if you are already an established programmer.
Most programmers, by the way, prefer not to delve into.
And write your bikes.
In particular, this is why freelancing "in one" is so popular.
I didn't find anything like that in your description.
From real jambs of firm:
Another matter, that in normal firms to the trainee attach the mentor for another month.
Everything else:
You missed out in vain.
As my practice shows, 2 weeks are needed only for the initial understanding.
That is, when you still don’t understand anything in essence, but at least you can do something useful. 2 weeks just for that.
There are 2 ways of a programmer:
1) Individualism. Freelance. Shit sites, shit apps. Work in non-IT firms or in small firms where the process is not set and in fact you do everything alone. The bad thing is that there is no one to get feedback from, no one to study with, there are no experienced colleagues nearby. You'll be making shitty websites and shitty apps all your life. Well, a little more civilized. And that's all. This is the limit.
2) If you still want to do something more difficult and interesting and cheaper in life - study in a large office with colleagues. Where is the process. Where your work is controlled. Yes, you have to poke around in a pile of someone else's year, in a pile of legacy. This is fine. For a highly skilled programmer -someone else's code and interaction with colleagues is extremely important. Technically serious projects are made only by large groups of programmers.

Answer 4

I love looking at situations like this. Not gloating :), of course. Went through all this.
I'll tell you this, I saw very few places where everything was "laid out on the shelves, chewed and put in the mouth." But with the first job, luckier. There was just a simple office, but there was a very good chief techie. He understood everything and took the time. Though then I realized that I generally came to zero. Unlike you. You have to adapt to the team. Do little, but do. Then you will do a little more with more confidence. At the beginning, I generally thought that I was only taking time from the developers and doing nothing. Did the routine for them. It should be much easier for you. Only worked for a few months and was already upset. I suffered for more than a year to get at least some confidence in my knowledge.

Answer 5

I join heartdevil and will also add from myself
From personal experience. Stages of understanding that you are useful in the current job:
1) For the first two weeks, I studied the terminology of the subject area, just to understand what I will work with.
2) Then for two weeks those helped. support to understand what problems users face and again to understand a little terminology. During this time, I changed a couple of lines in the code in order to simply understand how the team works, how PRs are drawn up, how CI / CD works, how code reviews go.
3) The next month, they gave me a couple of unit tests to write, along with a person who already knows how to do this.
4) Next came adult tasks, which I did for another year with hellish effort and creaking. And only a year later, it became clear that there is still a benefit.
5) Felt more or less useful. In a year. Thanks to those who helped. support, wrote tests, made edits of varying severity, etc.
Maybe your work was really bad in terms of the speed of gaining experience, but for a month, it's hard to judge. In any case, to me.
PS In the first year of work, I also wanted to ask such a question here, but I was too shy. Probably in vain.)

Answer 6

If you really know how to program, i.e. to successfully convey an idea to the machine, so that it fulfills it exactly, then this is very cool, but this is categorically not enough.
Also, for the successful implementation of any project, it is necessary to navigate the issues, to master the contexts. And if it is quite possible to learn how to program abstractly, then the contexts are different everywhere, and you need to master them locally, so to speak, in battle ...
I wrote accounting software for a very long time, while not really having knowledge of accounting. I have always worked closely with experienced specialized specialists, in fact, being more like a translator from human to machine. Moreover, the specialized specialists did their job well, but silently, literally like captured partisans. Therefore, my first task has always been to get the accountant to talk, to help them comprehend and formulate in the smallest detail the processes that they have been doing automatically every day for many years. Of course, I have never seen any TK in my life. Rather, I formed the TK myself from what I managed to find out from accountants and their management.
One of the options to talk is to come and tell your vision. People love to correct, make adjustments, add details. :) This is called gossip. :)
A suitable product most often turned out from the third or fourth time, because at first they can’t connect two words to you at all. And not because they don't want to, but because for them it is a completely unusual type of activity - to tell the uninitiated about complex processes in a popular way. Generally speaking, you need to be able to do this, you are not born with this. Therefore, it is your sacred duty to help them in this.
The second stage is when they sort of sorted it out more or less, found mutual understanding, something started to work out. For a while you literally sculpt a humpbacked man, bring him out into the light of God, and they tell you not bad, but ... It’s not like that, it’s not right here, it doesn’t exist at all, but this is not necessary ... You redo it once, a second, a third , the twentieth, and now it seems that the finish line has already appeared on the horizon, when, suddenly, the customer’s appetite wakes up and a stormy stream of wishes with improvements falls on you, which do not fit into the framework of the original architecture and processes at all.
Your brain is already starting to boil concretely, at first you courageously try to attach another hundred and hundreds of crutches and props to the project, but it already consists of nothing but crutches. The creator wakes up in you, the permanent feeling that everything needs to be rewritten in the bud overpowers and you heroically rewrite everything and even get sweetie... And then everything repeats from the beginning... Because the customer's specialists have already tasted the product, they are already saving time and effort, already addicted and want more...
After a certain project, you begin to understand that, in general, 90% of the work is repeated from project to project, almost, if not one to one, then very similar ... Plus, you are already advising the customer’s specialists in places on how best to do their work, because you know how it is better to structure and systematize them, and the processes in organizations are not always optimally built.
From time to time you start to perform the same actions, but what does the programmer do when the process is repeated at least three times? That's right, it automates. Only here you already automate your work, and this is how all kinds of libraries, frameworks, compilers and other cool developer tools are born. But first you need to collect a vast heap of all kinds of rakes and stick a dozen humpbacked ...
It suddenly turns out that in all these processes, softskills rule and decide.
In general, my advice is to download everything, especially softskills and put aside kuksitsya.
PySy: Most employees in the companies where you will live will consider you either a magician, or a magician, or a telepath, or all together. Everyone will be sincerely convinced that you know everything that he knows, plus a bunch of everything that they don’t know, so they will load everything with anything. They will also sincerely believe that you have access to the fifth dimension, that you have a lot of time (that is, about 48 hours a day, or maybe 72, who knows...) and you are multitasking. In general, they will show all conceivable and unthinkable forms of inadequacy. This is fine. You need to go through this, learn to swim in all this, like a fish in water. It's great for pumping you as a person if you are set for such progress.
If you just want to sit on the sidelines and code, then you need to look for companies / teams where all IT processes are already built and formalized, where analysts, managers, and leads have already done all this work for you. Where do you come to the finished architecture, with a detailed description of the code style. Where they will throw off feasible tasks for you, thought out and detailed. Yes, such companies also exist, but you need to look for them, because. they are still in the minority...

Answer 7

Of course, ideally, at work, everything is explained and shown at first. But this is not an institution; in any field at work, the ability to adapt and understand issues on your own is valued.
If everything still does not suit you within a month or two, then it is better to change jobs.

Answer 8

1 - no offense - a question both in spirit (100%) and in essence (100%) to a psychotherapist
2 - do you really like programming? generally? if not really - change your profession! (on what - it's like that on your own ... or with a psychotherapist)
ps purely humanly - "entered into de;% o" ... it happens ... with many ... you shift your attention to the fact that YOU WANT ... and move towards it (with or without a doctor, well, really, no offense, it happens that the doctor will help a lot) .. but in this de;% e - do not linger ... not a minute of
luck!

Answer 9

well, if you fold your hands like this every time when difficulties have not yet begun, then alas, this is not your profession, I ask you to go to the factory

Answer 10

Understand yourself and think carefully about what you want. If you like your specialty, but do not like the current situation, change it. If you initially studied not for something that brings pleasure and went the wrong way and something else is closer to you, then it’s not too late to think about choosing a direction, otherwise you will have this state of affairs in any job. If the robot does not bring pleasure - it needs to be changed urgently. Life is too short to waste it on something that is morally overwhelming. It’s scary to imagine where I could be now if I hadn’t changed everything drastically :)

Answer 11

Yes, complete bullshit, go to the ASS! Leave immediately if you encounter this again. Of course, I can’t say about Russia, but in Israel they always treat newcomers with caution and well, regardless of the level, they try to help, support, this is generally the best practice in civilized IT. They usually attach a beginner to someone, make an introductory course, give some kind of easy task for a few tricks of the code, and as much time as it asks, then review the code, work on bugs, and a new task, and so on in a circle with complication in depth and breadth. And you, excuse me, govnokontora caught.

Answer 12

Do not worry! Many in the 2nd year live at the expense of their parents and, in general, do not worry about their employment until they receive a diploma. And you got a job somewhere for an internship, which already deserves respect.
Stay here as long as you can (at least 3-4 months), try to extract the maximum knowledge and skills from the situation. And when it becomes completely unbearable or you feel that you are not getting new skills, quit.

Answer 13

Change jobs.

Answer 14

Kubuntu or Linux mint KDE.

Answer 15

It seems to me if the question sounds like "Which distribution kit to choose?" then a 100% solution is always (well, judging by the fact that the questioner is unprincipled in choosing a distribution kit) *buntu (U, Ku, Lu, Xu, ... underline as necessary)

Answer 16

Only Gentoo

Answer 17

It worked stably and without any tricks, and so that it does not fall from the update - these are almost fairy tales.
Usually a consistently sad bug pops up every six months. All popular distributions are regularly updated and have fresh software, even Centoy from the 7th version came out fresh.

Answer 18

ubuntu

Answer 19

worked stably, without any tricks
from the update so as not to fall

and
These are practically mutually exclusive paragraphs.
Stable work without bugs - Debian 7, the latest software - Ubuntu and its derivatives. Notebook support is now available in many modern distributions, KDE - you need to look at a specific distro.
The easiest way, I think, will be with apt. Accordingly, your choice: Kubuntu (and other Ubuntu-based with KDE) or Debian with KDE.

Answer 20

NixOS ( nixos.org/)

Answer 21

Russian Fedora

Answer 22

Debian