The Guide to Onboarding Software Engineers
I'll never forget the onboarding in my first job. It was almost perfect. Senior developers who knew how to communicate without making me feel like a toddler (in spite of the fact that I was), small tasks that helped both to build confidence and measure my comfort zone. All that on top of the fact that I worked fully remote.<p>But my biggest issue was pairing me in the immediate visinity of another junior developer. Yes, rationally I understood perfectly that people can be different, and that someone may have more knowledge in a language or framework than me. Emotionally all I kept feeling was fear. Being unable to keep up with him, needing more time to complete my assigned tasks, him being more chill/casual with the lead devs while I'm hammered with my negative self-talk telling me that I waste their precious time and they're better off hiring someone else instead. And the worst part: Interpreting their positive feedback as professionalism. "Surely they don't really mean that, just look at me".<p>Eventually I moved out of that team and got into another team where I'm the only junior developer, meaning that it's finally time for my self-talk to accept that I obviously cannot hold a candle compared to everyone else, and I can focus on learning the codebase and improving myself. Now my self-talk thinks that I got soft-booted out of the old team for being unable to keep up with the other junior developer.<p>What I mean is, some problems can be so personal that you cannot help even if you do everything right.