This is more or less how I felt when I started my first job out of school. I assure you it does get better with time: 3-6 months is probably a conservative estimate for when you will feel &quot;up to speed&quot;.<p>What really helped me at first was having another engineer I could latch onto and do a lot of pair programming (sometimes just watching over his shoulder). If you are on a project all by yourself where nobody else knows the system either, that&#x27;s a lot tougher to do.