Title: Hello all,<p>I got my first swe job this past August and it honestly has not gone well. I&#x27;ve enjoyed it, but it is clear that I am not seen as reliable and definitely not known for completing things fast.<p>I know this sounds like a normal junior dev, but I mean more than a normal beginner. Example: I have now been on this team for 8 months, and I made 2 costly mistake back-to-back that is pushing back the release of a production feature by a while month at this point.<p>Long story short, screwed up a step I had done before in the fall without realizing. Then when it was fixed I submitted a ticket for a prod systems account rather than a QA one not realizing there would be a difference. (Just so many mistakes all in a row).<p>The struggles came way before this though. When I first joined I struggled to even know how to start things. I was sometimes assigned stories no one else on the team had done anything like before, so at times I couldn&#x27;t even ask the senior devs for help.<p>This gets down to the issue. I don&#x27;t think my team is necessarily the most ideal to learn on (my manager has been gone since December). The senior engineers also seem to assume I know more than I do (like the credentials above, it seems obvious there would be an account for QA and one for Prod, but I didn&#x27;t know to assume that). But, the thing is though, this team isn&#x27;t a bad one. I can make excuses all I want, but an experienced engineer joined the same time I did and is doing great.<p>I have identified some issues. I certainly didn&#x27;t ask enough questions when I started and I definitely will wait around for people to get back to me sometimes rather then be proactive. I also tend to spend too long tackling an issue or trying to fix something I think I messed up rather than raise it to the team that I am having an issue. The problem is at this point I have been on the team too long to ask any basic questions, one of the senior engineers even pointed out they shouldn&#x27;t be helping me with certain processes at this point.<p>Honestly, I am a little deflated. I know imposter syndrome is a thing, but that doesn&#x27;t count when I am actively slowing the team down or causing problems. I take a really long time when finishing stories unless one of the seniors is giving input. It just sucks because I did well in my CS classes and worked hard, and I feel kinda like a disappointment. Its hard to imagine anyone who is good at engineering delaying a teams release and causing problems. I don&#x27;t know anything about performance (again cause manager is gone) but if I get put on PIP because of this, I feel like I can&#x27;t help but see it as a statement on my potential and ability.<p>I know I should just focus on improvement, but I am not sure how. Should I be writing reminders to myself to always double check everything? Should I write down the steps to every process? Its hard for me to know whats a junior engineer error and whats an error I shouldn&#x27;t be making at all.
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