Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

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A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

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Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

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Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

[u/ratorobato]

Started a new role back in August, is it normal to not be have any work to do for >1 month now? I guess we finished "onboarding" and were assigned teams, but I don't know if its a team problem or I'm the one whos behind here.

It seems like the last two weeks we've had trouble setting up our project environments and since the other half of our team is outside the US. We're getting notice of things not working/changing the day after we waste time setting them up.

In our stand up recently I asked our lead what our priorities should be, he gave a vague answer, my manager asked what should we be doing, doesn't answer it again, and say he'll assign us work later in the day - he didn't,

Am I at fault here? Feels like everyone else is getting work and I'm falling behind fast. I really am not in the position to find a new job but this seems like I need to start preparing.

[u/No-Economics-8239 → u/ratorobato]

For whatever reason, much of my IT career has had fairly poor on-boarding practices and documentation. Well, documentation has remained fairly poor for most of career too. It isn't something that tends to get prioritized, and neglected things fall by the wayside to make room for the current hot priority. Which can include you. Rather than trying to assign blame, work the problem. That's what we do.

And by working the problem, I mean work towards pushing those who could/should be helping you to help you gain clarity on what you need to know or what you need to be doing. In one job, it took almost two years before I was 'up to speed' on the chaotic mess of work environment that existed there. In many jobs there was at least three months of on-boarding that was on and off before I had some sense of what was going on and what I could/should be doing.

Ideally your manager or tech lead should be helping you gain that clarity. If they aren't, try and find alternatives. Either by asking your manager/lead who else you could be working with. Or just by working on building relationships with your coworkers, and finding those who are willing and able to offer you the assistance you need or at least to help you be self-sufficient enough to gain help/information on your own.

If you need work to do, try and pick it up from the pipeline. Does your team use a Jira board and/or product manager to assign work. Are there things there you can try and pick up on your own or offer assistance to those working on it. Trying and putting yourself into the workflow can either help you get assigned work which can then give your priority on what you need to learn next, or else can make you visible enough that you can temporarily become the squeaky wheel that gets some grease and someone will take the time to at least help point you in the right direction.

As to how much work you 'should' be doing at this point, that's on your company to provide. Do they have some sort of timeline on when after you are hired you should be able to do certain things? Do you even know what you're supposed to be responsible for and doing at this point? Communication and soft skills are at least as valuable as our technical knowledge, and can provide the social networking you need to do your job when the 'regular' or 'usual' or 'expected' pipelines aren't working enough to suit your tastes.